> How many instruments do you manufacture ?
Actually the flavours are a lot. For example, we have a dry bath heater 
that controls the temperature of a block of aluminium. This block of 
aluminium has holes to accommodate various sizes of glass/plastic tubes. 
It can be 24 holes of 10mm tubes, 30 holes of 8mm tubes, 18 holes of 
12mm tubes. Then, it could be a resistive heater heating alone model or 
a peltier based heating+cooling model. So the permutations/combinations 
are a lot.

 > Do you want the serial number to be human decodable
 > or will a simple computer application do ?
Human decodable preferably.


Thanks for your suggestion with the example. It'll still need a 
calculator to work out. However, something like what you wrote but base 
50 would be easy. Let the "a-z" be "a-n".

Thanks,
Mohit.

Cedric Chang wrote:
> How many instruments do you manufacture ?  Do you want the serial  
> number to be human decodable or will a simple computer application do ?
> I am going to recommend that you use A-Z  and a-z and 0-9 for your  
> serial number.  This gives you a base 62 digit.  Be sure to use a  
> type style that differentiates between O ( oh ) and 0 (zero ).  A  
> slashed zero should work.  Also make sure upper and lower case look  
> very different.  A slashed Z would help as well.  You could order  
> them 0-9, A-Z and a-z.  ( or whatever )
> 
> One digit will give you the years 2008-2069 which should be pretty good.
> One digit should give the week of the year.
> One digit would give you 62 model numbers.  Two digits would give  
> you  3,844 model numbers.
> 4 digits for the serial number will give you 14 million discrete  
> serial numbers per model.
> ( 3 digits gives 238K discrete numbers )
> 
> So a serial number like Fa05-34AB   would translate to
> --year = 2008+15 = 2023
> --week = a [base 62] = decimal 37
> --model number is 05 [base 62] = model #5 ( decimal)
> --34AB [base 62] = 3*(62**4) + 4*(62**3) + 10*(62**2) + 11*(62)   <--- 
> decimal
> 
> cc
> 
> 
> On Jun 24, 2008, at 9:37 PM, Mohit Mahajan (Lists) wrote:
> 
> Hello,
> 
> We manufacture a lot of different kinds of instruments (but each in
> small quantities). Our serial numbering scheme so far is pretty basic:
> ABCD-EFGH. AB tells us the week and CD the last two digits of the year.
> EFGH starts at 0000 every year in January, and increases count with each
> instrument manufactured. It gives no indication which model or what was
> manufactured. This info would be given by a spreadsheet where the
> description of the instrument is entered next to the serial number. So
> we'd have to look up the serial number in this sheet to know what
> instrument we're talking about.
> 
> I'd like suggestions for a serial number scheme that could indicate the
> instrument model/type, date of manufacture (for warranty purposes). And
> it shouldn't be too long, about 8-10 characters.
> 
> It would be great to know what schemes members here or their companies
> use to number their products.
> 
> Thanks,
> Mohit Mahajan.
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