Meaning – The term product number, refers to a machine number, the four-digit number that identifies every major IBM hardware product. The numbers rarely have any relationship to each other but some sort of sequence sometimes may be followed (e.g., 3350, 3370, 3380 are all disk storage devices).
Intelligent numbering is very common in the product industry. This is when a product’s number or ID contains meaningful information. For example, a fashion brand might have a jacket label WJF20S123-BLK-S. In the style name, “W” means Women, “J” means Jacket, F20 means Fall 2020 season, S123 means the sequential style number. “BLK” is the color black and “S” stands for small size. The style numbers can get really detailed.
Example of usage – “Intelligent numbering isn’t just a human problem, it’s a systems problem. Especially for consumer brands, once they start adding new product categories, additional information must be added to the product master data setup.”
