What is the Material numbering rule for Manufacturer pieces ?

Hi,

We want to create the manufacturer materials in our system.

First We thought about using the manufacturer reference it self (external numbering) because our users know them. The issue is that there is a risk that 2 manufacturers use the same code, and so it will not be possible for us to create the second one.

Then we thought about identifying the manufacturer in the code to prevent this issue : 3 characters identifying the manufacturer concatenated with his own reference. But in this case the 18 characters of MATNR field are not sufficient?

-> Is there any possiblity to extend this 18 to 25 characters ??

I do not think so, so now we are investigating in a normalised numbering ie EAN code, but manufacturers can not garanty us to have this code for each material.

Is an internal numbering, with only incrementation 1, 2, 3 etc the only solution ??

What is you return of experience on this theme ?

Thank you for your support,

Isabelle