[Paul Copioli]

This is a great question and an area that most people overlook or just take for granted.

Here are two systems that I currently use. The first one is at IFI and is structured based on the fact that we have three main engineering companies that share resources. We use a three digit numerical prefix system. Our SKUs, or items for sale to customers are seven digit numbers where the last 4 are unique no matter what the prefix. The 3 digit prefix is assigned based on company. VEX has the 200 series. That is why the VEX Robotics Design System items all start with either 275, 276, or 278 and VEXpro starts with 217. Rack solutions has the 100 series numbers and Hexbug has 400 and 600.

The last 4 are sequentially assigned based on the next available SKU. for sub items that are not to be sold to customers we use 10 digits. The first 7 are from the actual sold item and the last three are arbitrary numbers assigned in order.

This system helps is identify which product line and which actual product a part is from

On our FRC team we use a little different system. We use TC-yyyy-xxx-abcd where yyyy is the FRC competition year. XXX is the subassembly. For example, 100 is the drive base and 110 is the drive transmission. The last digits are assigned in order but the main assembly is always -000. For example last years drive base subassembly was TC-2012-100-000.

Paul