Product Codes We Normalize

When every product carries a single, unambiguous code, your sales team and your buyers stop arguing over what was actually quoted. Buyer RFQs map cleanly to your catalog, so quotes go out faster and without manual interpretation. Pricing stays consistent because the same product always carries the same code: no duplicate SKUs for the same flange, no scattered historical prices, no parallel codes that drift apart over time. For your ERP, e-commerce, and analytics, the code is the single source of truth.

Yes. The table above shows macro-level ASTM/EN specifications, but the engine normalizes down to individual grades, classes, schedules, ratings, and sizes. For example, ASTM A182 covers dozens of grades (F304, F316, F321, F11, F22, F91 and more), each with multiple size and class combinations. Each one becomes a distinct normalized code, so when a buyer asks for an "A182 F316L 2in 300# WN flange" the engine matches the exact item in your catalog, not the family.

The table shows the product families currently covered by the normalization engine. We are actively expanding coverage to structural steel, joints, and pipe supports. If your catalog includes a category not listed here, get in touch and we will evaluate adding it to the roadmap.

Yes. When a buyer RFQ contains inaccurate descriptions, references non-existent products, or has incomplete specifications, the engine flags the line and proposes a default for review instead of guessing. This catches mistakes early, before your sales team prices an item that does not exist or quotes the wrong material to a buyer. The same checks apply to your catalog imports, so duplicates and bad entries get caught at the source, reducing clarification rounds and avoiding wrong prices going out.

That's the core of what the engine does. A buyer might write "6in WN RF flge A105", another "FLANGE WN 150# 6" RAISED FACE SA-105", a third in another language entirely. All map to the same normalized code in your catalog. The engine parses free-text descriptions against a rules database covering all standard abbreviations, formats, and conventions used across piping procurement. No AI guessing, just deterministic rule-based parsing.

A fully normalized product description can be very long, too long for ERP material code fields. SAP's Material Master (MM), for example, allows a maximum of 18 characters for material numbers in classic configurations. We need a way to compress a full description into a short, fixed-length code while guaranteeing that every unique product gets its own unique code. That's where SHA-256 comes in. It's a cryptographic hash function, the same algorithm used in digital signatures, blockchain, and certificate verification. It takes any input and produces a fixed-length fingerprint that is deterministic: the same product always generates the same code, every time, on any machine. We use a 3-letter product prefix (e.g. PIP, FLG, VLV) followed by 15 hex characters from the hash. Those 15 digits alone give 16¹⁵ = 1.15 quintillion possible combinations, more than enough to cover every product variant in the global piping industry with a unique code. As for collisions (two different products generating the same code): with the birthday problem formula, at 3 million product codes the probability is roughly 1 in 256,000. At 10 million codes, about 1 in 23,000. In practice, it is virtually impossible for two different products to end up with the same code.

MESC (Material Equipment Standards and Code), developed by Shell, covers only a fraction of the product variants we handle. MESC is also a closed, proprietary system with limited access and licensing restrictions. Our goal is different: an open codification standard that any stockist, mill, distributor, or software vendor can adopt freely. Piping procurement today is a tower of Babel where every company uses its own codes, abbreviations, and formats. Instead of relying on Shell's restricted catalog, we built an open, deterministic system that covers all piping product families, so a buyer's RFQ and your catalog finally speak the same language.