Character limit on part numbers

Hey,

Part No in IFS is limited to 25 Characters. 

Since Part No is used in A LOT of Tables and A LOT of Functions/Procedures this is basically impossible to customize. You don’t need to try :-). 

There are alternatives you can look into though, depending on what you want to achieve. Like f.e. storing the “longer” Part No somewhere connected to the part. Any reason you can’t use the part_no within the 25 characters? 

If you want to have  part characteristics displayed in a part Number try to shorten the codes for that or look into storing part Characteristics on the part (there’s a fucntion for that). 

Other more descriptive information can also be in the part description and so on. If you let us know why you need longer Part Nos we could probably show you alternatives.

Johannes

Thanks.  I was curious about how a conversion from SAP to IFS would manage existing material numbers up to 40 characters (34 + 6 for cage code)

Like @Novacura_jst mentioned, customizing the field PART_NO is an unwanted risk.

Instead, you can think of alternatives, like;

• trying to find a way to incorporate \ transform the PART_NO into a 25 characters long, maybe by a proper change management and master data management process
• trying to make use of part-to-characteristic (e.g. technical class maybe) combination to identify a unique material 
• trying to introduce another field for the next 15 characters (via customization or configuration) but that involves a considerable amount of customizations \ configurations to achieve the data integrity

Hope this helps

Cage code has a different place in IFS .. Look for NATO Codifications Standard. You should not use the part number field for that. 

You’ll have to deal with the exceptions. We created a new field of 40 characters (called it MaterialNo) to keep the existing part number as we had it in SAP, then reindexed/renumbered all SAP part numbers which did not fit into IFS’s 25 characters limit. 

From SAP you have numeric ID for part numbers anyway, see if you can define that as PN, then everything else needs to bring over the new “MaterialNo” field with the SAP part number over. Modifications are extensive as everything includes a part number, (including printouts) starting from orders, inventories, pick lists, sales, quotes etc.