Patterns for Unique Product Identification

The increasing competition in global markets forces companies to optimise their manufacturing and logistic processes. Tied supply chains, just in time production are means to reduce costs while shortening the needed “time to market”. Customers are attracted not only by the product prize, but properties like quality and safety. In case of higher prized goods the ability to offer individualised products is an competitive advantage. Manufacturers are facing the challenge of cost reduction by mass production with a lot size of one at the same time. The manufacturing of complex products involves often several companies. Thus product information has to be managed during a product’s whole lifecycle: from design, manufacturing, maintenance to disposal or recycling. In most applications it is not possible, not desirable or not necessary to store all the product information along with the product itself. Typical reasons are: • The amount of data is too large for the available storage or representation capacity. • Not all of the product information should be accessible openly or has to be hidden due to legal restrictions. • Only a very small portion of the product data is necessary.