Coding and Classification of Parts

Coding is a procedure of establishing symbols to the parts utilized for communicating media and at the same time manufacturing details of the product. Classification refers to the procedure of categorization of a set of parts into part families. Coding & classification both are closely associated, i.e. classification requirements should be considered while the construction of a coding scheme and coding might be used for classification process. A survey of all components should be completed before a coding scheme might be constructed. The application of the coding scheme decides the selection of relevant features. For instances, tolerance is not significant for design retrieval; thus, it is not a feature in a design oriented coding scheme but in a manufacturing-oriented coding system, this is an important feature.

The code structure affects its length; the expandability and the accessibility of a code and thus, these coding structures differ from each other:

• In terms of the symbols they employ such as, alphabetic, numeric or alphanumeric.
• In the assignment of these symbols to produce codes.

However, the variations in codes resulting from the way the symbols are assigned might be categorized into three different kinds of code structure :

• Monocode or Hierarchical code
• Chain (matrix) code or Polycode
• Hybrid code or Mixed code