[thelist] SKU Numbers?

Luther, Ron ron.luther at hp.com
Wed May 18 15:46:47 CDT 2005


Mark Groen asked:

>>Aren't you two contradicting yourself? Isn't designing the master
table what 
>>the original post was about? Aren't the best SKU's the ones that
describe the 
>>product within the numbers themselves?

Hi Mark,


Nope. Not at all. No contradiction ... and those ain't the 'best' skus.
;-)

The original post suggested, (I paraphrase), that
"2005REDMUSTANGCONVERTIBLE" 
would be a nice sku.  I disagree.

The part master table concept would allow any number of different
'descriptive' 
fields to be used in the same entered record, ala:

Sku = "12345-001"
Division = "CARS"
Product Line = "MUSTANG"
Body Style = "CONVERTIBLE"
Color = "Red"
CD Player = "Yes"
Wheels = "22 inch Sprewells"
Master Planner = "007"
Production Line = "A4"
Etc. .......
More etc. ....
Even more etc. .....


The sku number itself would be arbitrary and contain no 'intelligence'.
Yet 
all of the desired intelligence (and more) can easily be built into the
table 
structure.  See the difference?

Now which of those two designs is more flexible, extensible, and useable
from 
a long term perspective?  Which design can provide the most information?
I 
don't think it's a tough choice.  The master table design is a clear
winner.

AND ... it's a heck of a lot easier to work with when you have to build
those 
web-based reports.  (Try parsing out and branching your logic based on
the 
66th character of a 100 character part number or part feature field.
I've 
had to do it. It's slow and painful. This is a lot easier and faster.)


The *real* problem with trying to build all the intelligence into the
part 
number is that you never forsee all of the possibilities you are
eventually 
going to need. You'll allocate 1 digit for color - and, eventually some 
marketing person is going to add an 11th color to screw up your numeric
field, 
or a 37th color to screw up your ascii-7 alpha field, or ... you get the

picture.  

This was best explained to me using a rather mundane part - the screw. 
You may think that length, head type (philips, allen, butterfly, star,
etc.), 
pitch, threads-per-inch, and thread depth would cover everything you
needed 
to know. 

If so you would be forgetting material (stainless steel, etc.), and type

(wood, metal, etc.).  If you covered those you would be forgetting the 
various powder and chemical coatings. If you covered those, you would
forget 
something else - like color.

The point is that if you remove the intelligence from the part "number"
you 
don't lose that intelligence - you link to it through the part number.
Forget 
a value? Forget a field? Have a new technology come up and offer a new 
possibility that never existed in the past? No sweat - add them as
fields or 
values to the master table and you are done.


RonL.

Heh. Thanks for the link to bar codes BTW ... I spent several years
working 
for the market leader in manufacturing bar code reader solutions.   It
was 
the Engineering team at that company that convinced me that adding 
'intelligence' to part numbers is a bad idea!  So the company _making_
the 
bar code readers thinks intelligent part numbers is a bad idea!  ;-)


More information about the thelist mailing list