Happy New Year to all of you and I am wishing you all an understandable and digital future. This year I hope to entertain you again with a mix of future trends related to PLM combined with old PLM basics. This time, one of the topics that are popping up in almost every PLM implementation – numbering schemes – do we use numbers with a meaning, so-called intelligent numbers or can we work with insignificant numbers? And of course, the question what is the impact of changing from meaningful numbers towards unique meaningless numbers.
Why did we create “intelligent” numbers?
Intelligent part numbers were used to help engineers and people on the shop floor for two different reasons. As in the early days, the majority of design work was based on mechanical design. Often companies had a one-to-one relation between the part and the drawing. This implied that the part number was identical to the drawing number. An intelligent part number could have the following format: A4-95-BE33K3-007.A
Of course, I invented this part number as the format of an intelligent part number is only known to local experts. In my case, I was thinking about a part that was created in 1995, drawn on A4. Probably a bearing of the 33K3 standard (another intelligent code) and its index is 007 (checked in a numbering book). The version of the drawing (part) is A
A person, who is working in production, assembling the product and reading the BOM, immediately knows which part to use by its number and drawing. Of course the word “immediately” is only valid for people who have experience with using this part. And this was in the previous century not so painful as it is now. Products were not so sophisticated as they are now and variation in products was limited.
Later, when information became digital, intelligent numbers were also used by engineering to classify their parts. The classification digits would assist the engineer to find similar parts in a drawing directory or drawing list.
And if the world had not changed, there would be still intelligent part numbers.
Why no more intelligent part numbers?
There are several reasons why you would not use intelligent part numbers anymore.
An intelligent number scheme works in a perfect world where nothing is changing. In real life companies merge with other companies and then the question comes up: Do we introduce a new numbering scheme or is one of the schemes going to be the perfect scheme for the future?If this happened a few times, a company might think: Do we have to through this again and again? As probably topic #2 has also occurred.- The numbering scheme does not support current products and complexity anymore. Products change from mechanical towards systems, containing electronic components and embedded software. The original numbering system has never catered for that. Is there an overreaching numbering standard? It is getting complicated, perhaps we can change ? And here #3 comes in.
As we are now able to store information in a digital manner, we are able to link to this complex part number a few descriptive attributes that help us to identify the component. Here the number is becoming less important, still serving as access to the unique metadata. Consider it as a bar code on a product. Nobody reads the bar code without a device anymore and the device connected to an information system will provide the right information. This brings us to the last point #4.- In a digital enterprise, where data is flowing between systems, we need unique identifiers to connect datasets between systems. The most obvious example is the part master data. Related to a unique ID you will find in the PDM or PLM system the attributes relevant for overall identification (Description, Revision, Status, Classification) and further attributes relevant for engineering (weight, material, volume, dimensions).
In the ERP system, you will find a dataset with the same ID and master attributes. However here they are extended with attributes related to logistics and finance. The unique identifier provides the guarantee that data is connected in the correct manner and that information can flow or connected between systems without human interpretation or human-spent processing time.
And this is one of the big benefits of a digital enterprise, reducing overhead in data handling, often reducing the cost of data handling with 50 % or more (people / customizations)
What to do now in your company?
There is no business justification just to start renumbering parts just for future purposes. You need a business reason. Otherwise, it will only increase costs and create a potential for migration errors. Moving to meaningless part numbers can be the best done at the moment a change is required. For example, when you implement a new PLM system or when your company merges with another company. At these moments, part numbering should be considered with the future in mind.
And the future is no longer about memorizing part classifications and numbers, even if you are from the generation that used to structure and manage everything inside your brain. Future businesses rely on digitally connected information, where a person based on machine interpretation of a unique ID will get the relevant and meaningful data. Augmented reality (picture above) is becoming more and more available. It is now about human beings that need to get ready for a modern future.
Conclusion
Intelligent part numbers are a best practice from the previous century. Start to think digital and connected and try to reduce the dependency of understanding the part number in all your business activities. Move towards providing the relevant data for a user. This can be an evolution smoothening a future PLM implementation step.
Looking forward to discussing this topic and many other PLM related practices with you face to face during the Product Innovation conference in Munich. I will talk about the PLM identity change and lead a focus group session about PLM and ERP integration. Looking from the high-level and working in the real world. The challenge of every PLM implementation.
Jos Voskuil's Weblog 
4 comments
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January 11, 2016 at 12:16 am
Mathias Högberg (@MathiasHgberg)
I totally agree with you on this Jos. I do have a question regarding this and a level of intelligence in part numbering(or connected depending on your definition). I have several times come across the situation of variance and intelligence is connected to degree of intelligence. This often a down-stream problem that floats up when discussing the PLM platform (ERP, PIM and such integrations). When a variance is set up is usually a xxxx-xxxx-xxx-n where n is the number of the variant. I have also run into the xxxx-xxxx-nnnn where nnnn is the variance number for surface treatment, Paint and such.
Usually this behavior has been untouched by the PLM-no-number-intelligence part of the project since it is not handled as the part number in the PLM but to me it is a dilemma. I can clearly see the advantage by not creating unique numbers for all colors and such but in the warehouse you still (probably) have a unique storage place for the specific color/surface treatment but with limited tractability from a PLM perspective. And that is, at least, a theoretical problem for change management platform and the tractability that we strive to achieve. Also with increasing demands for material compliance this is challenge often related to the surface treatments.
Any thoughts on this matter?
Mathias hello, Thanks for your point as I have had this discussion too in a few cases. When you would give variances of a part a suffix, leaving the first digits the same, you are actually creating some intelligence in the number. The question is what is the value of this intelligence. In PLM you will manage variants through relations. In manufacturing you might want to produce variants one after the other in a production schedule. Here the similarity would help for grouping. However when analyzing this topic at a customer’s plant we did not find a reason to keep this intelligence as the production planner has to know the product details, what are the variances and similarities in the BOM.
The same for the storage location. If you label all products with barcodes, the hand scanner will give you all the details. Here I believe the advantage is even higher because you never pick the wrong part from the store even though they might all look very similar. And I saw the situation where the treated part and the raw part had similar numbers. However again for the result, like compliancy it is about the data behind this part number, not about the similarity of the number.
But you are right – in our mind we still look for the comfort of similarity in numbers. And this is not bad if you are not 100 % digital and connected. Once all is handled in a digital manner (integrated PLM/ERP/MES) with scanning at the shopfloor it will become clear the numbers are almost not relevant for the people working with the parts anymore
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January 12, 2016 at 5:10 pm
Tony Foulon
Hello Jos.
Thank you for this interesting post. As a PLM consultant, I had the same discussion quite often.
At one of our customers, there are plans to switch to automatic numbering. An ERP consultant recommended them to renumber all the existing intelligent part numbers also.
I am not sure this brings enough business value since there are a lot of practical challenges. Numbers are on the drawing, drawings need to be updated. BOM’s need to be updated, etc.
What reasons do you see to renumber everything?
Is it better to leave the intelligent number in place for existing parts and add an automatic number?
Thanks for sharing your point of view.
Best regards.
Tony
Tony thanks for your question as this question comes up many times when moving to meaningless numbers. I fully agree with you to leave the intelligent number in place for existing parts and add an automatic number for new parts. Here is assume the old numbering system and the new meaningless number cannot overlap. You are right, once you start renumbering there is so much related information that can be affected, like drawings, documentation, work instructions at the shop floor. There is no added value in re-doing them, there is only more chance for errors and accidents.
So I would say do not touch the old numbers if possible.
Next make sure there is no intelligence in business logic either inside PLM or ERP that resides in the number. This information should be stored in attributes, and here you should do this also for the intelligent part numbers. As the purpose is also that in the future, any stranger looking at the master data of a part does not need to know anything about the number. The number should be the unique identifier (combined with revisions – as this is standard in PLM) – the unique identifier is there for exchange between systems and recognition by scanners.
I hope this helps you in the argumentation. Yes for the ERP-side renumbering is “relative” easy as ERP does not store content in documents. For the rest of the company it is only extra cost and risk for no reason.
Success – Jos
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January 15, 2016 at 4:12 pm
Jan Takke
Agree with Jos wholeheartedly (as most of the times….;-)
Jan
Thanks Jan, makes me feel confident 🙂
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January 4, 2019 at 5:16 pm
Ifeanyi
What about semi-intelligent part numbers? There are clearly pros and cons to both. With semi-intelligent part numbers can be easy recognizable and search able. If you use attributes, this furthers and assists data management and reporting. And as noted in an earlier comment, attributes can be used in non intelligent part numbers. Data entry can be made in both paths. example someone entering wrong data in the attribute. non intelligent part numbers have quicker set up times.
I think the choice to decide in a number system is really dependent in scale-ability, maintenance, process flow of work of engineering to manufacturing, and the needs of people using the part numbers.
Note1: part numbers with dashes can be considered semi intelligent.
Note2: I would refrain from changing exist part numbers typically because of the work load and time frame most of this request entail.
my preference is alphanumeric semi-intelligent with no more than 15 characters.
Thoughts?
Dear lfeanyi thanks for sharing your thoughts. In general I see that people try to use semi-intelligent part numbers. The main reason for that is it allows quick filtering or reporting per group (the first set of part identifiers are the same). Personally I consider this as a soft reason as when your parts are defined in a datbase, there can always be an attribute reflecting this group of classification. I believe we do this to feel comfortable.
The main reason for non-intelligent part numbers is the fact that they do not create a legacy whenever a company merges with another company and they are used to uniquely identify a part allowing other systems, like ERP or MRO to point to the same part without the need to have the same attributes synchronized.
Non-intelligent part numbers are the base for digital continuity and federation of information.
I fully agree with your point 2 as part numbers might be referenced inside documents – you never want to touch legacy documents just for arranging data in a different manner.
You final conclusion is somehow a compromise: semi-intelligent means not aiming at 100 % digital and I do not see why a limit of 15 is needed. If you want people to remember part numbers (I for sure do not support that idea) you will need to go to 6 max 8 digits otherwise it becomes to hard to learn. Once you are above 8 digits there is no limit but the systems limit which is probably above 15.
Best regards, Jos
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