[TriLUG] central bar-code database?

[Brian Henning]

On the other hand, the "bar code" most commonly found on retail products 
  is a UPC - Universal Product Code.  These are administered by the GS1 
US (formerly the Uniform Code Council), and theoretically should be able 
to be traced back to their registered owner.

~Brian

William Sutton wrote:
> Having worked in a manufacturing firm (one of the largest in the world) 
> as one of the people responsible for the manufacturing software, I'll wade 
> in on this and give you the short and long answers.
> 
> The short answer (unsurprisingly) is no.
> 
> The long answer is somewhat more complicated.
> 
> First thing to remember about a barcode:  it isn't magic.  It takes 
> different patterns of rectangles to represent a single data character 
> (e.g., 0-9A-Za-z).  Add to that the usual use of a start/stop bit to flag 
> the scanner that a data pattern has started/ended, and you're looking at a 
> small amount of data in that barcode.
> 
> This isn't really a concern since most of the time, the data represented 
> by the barcode is printed at the bottom (e.g., 001-4323-4439-A), and is 
> usually some sort of serial number.
> 
> Different serial numbers are constructed differently based on a number of 
> factors:
> - How the business that contracted the product wants it composed
> - How the manufacturer wants it composed
> - Uniqueness concerns
> - Lot/sublot/manufacture date desires
> 
> Generally you'll see one of a number of strategies employed:
> - a block representing the lot/sublot
> - a block representing the date
> - a block representing the revision
> - a block representing a unique sequence
> 
> Any of these can be fixed or variable width, and in just about any order 
> desired.
> 
> And that's for one manufacturer for one customer for one product.  You 
> can appreciate the potential complexity involved, particularly considering 
> the fact that no one manufacturer is going to share this information with 
> its competitors.
> 
> Now, some of these numbers are standardized for one vendor across its 
> products (think Lenovo ThinkPads) so that any repair work can follow a 
> standardized serial number format and product repair process (think RMA).  
> Nonetheless, that may necessitate a manufacturer code being added to the 
> serial number so that one can know who worked on it...
> 
> As a final aside...lots of information is tracked by the serial number.  
> Depending on what is kept by whom, you can have as little information as 
> the manufacturer or as much as every step of the manufacturing process 
> including test results.
> 
> HTH :)
> 

-- 
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Brian A. Henning
strutmasters.com
336.597.2397x238
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