Material identification

The Identifier concept

Identifiers are human- and/or machine readable tags that are used to identify material in the process. Identifiers can identify both tracking materials and material lots. Identifiers serve as the model for bar-codes, RFID identifiers and so on in the Apis Click&Trace database.

An identifier is a text string that is attached to the TM or ML. The actual text string of the Identifier is called _IdentValueIDs, which are database generated serial numbers of all Identifiers in the system.

An identifier can be generated as a new identifier when the TM is inside a specific TPU or it can be inherited from the parent material in the previous TPU. A TM can have multiple identifiers. The example below illustrates the situation when 4 different materials exist in one TPU. Each of the materials has an identifier.

When the material moves between two TPU’s, the TraMaID will change. This is illustrated in the next figure where TraMaID 1 in the first TPU becomes TraMaID 3 in the second TPU. However, the Identifier ‘LotA’ is not changed.

Ident definitions 

A material can have several identifiers, and the different identifiers are most often instances of different ident definitions. For example, a material can have a human readable lot number in addition to a machine readable RFID identifier. In this situations, there are two ident definitions, the LotID and the RFID, and the lot number is an instance of the LotID ident definition whil the RFID identifier is an instance of the RFID ident definition.