News & Journal Articles

In this article, I will attempt to set up some of the background for a series of articles for an eventual discussion on unique item management.

Part Numbers

The part number system is one of the most misunderstood parts of a system of material identification. It is almost entirely based on best practices, although there are some rules for certain types of material. Perhaps the best article I have seen explaining part numbers is the Wikipedia page at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Part_number, which is a miracle it ever got written so well with exactly zero references.

Example UPC Lookup Results

Universal Product Cataloging Systems

Beyond the wild wild west of the part number system, attempts have been made by industry to standardize product identification. What is interesting is that we are exposed to these every single day. Even if a product has a part number, if it is sold somewhere, it is almost guaranteed to have a universal product number or equivalent code.
Continue reading “Product Identifiers and Catalog Systems”

I confess that I like reading research papers. It is an excellent way to stay up to date on the profession and also a good way to understand what is a fashionable trend (i.e. flavor of the day) vs. what is a trend toward progress. I always liked to read copiously, but it wasn’t until I started working on a doctoral degree that I learned how to read efficiently in order to achieve a research goal.

When an interesting research topic comes to mind, I usually start by searching for literature in Google Scholar (https://scholar.google.com/), which many people surprisingly don’t know it exists. But I digress.

I have been reading, off and on, for years about unique item management. This goes back to my brief time as a civil service employee in 2007 where I ended up working on a project that would have required individual parts in a submarine to be managed at the item level in order to enable remote management.

The Unique Logistics at  Ikea

Continue reading “Intelligent Products”