Marking Requirements of UID Labels

The UID labels are the perfect marking solution for the items that are not suitable for direct part marking. But, UID marking requires meet the UID standard to maintain a balance between markings of different items. Department of Defense has mandated that the item marking should comply with the standards of MIL-STD-130 and the contractors need to take care of each criteria of UID marking for marking the items. The maintenance of technical documentation and format in the marking is the challenging part of marking UID labels.

There are certain aspects of UID label making.

UID Labels Marking Requirements
The Department of Defense has mandated that the UID marking of the items should be in accordance with the criteria mentioned in the MIL-STD-130. The standard has mentioned that the contractors who are in charge of the items should mark them so as to meet the UID marking requirements.

The Data Required for UID Labels
The Government states the data that are essential for marking of the items with UID labels. The data include item number, part number, marking method, agency code, etc. Actually, the data elements require to construct the UID are the Unique identification of the item. As the data elements are entered in the 2D data matrix barcode format, it also requires a barcode scanner to decode the complete UID from the marking.

The UID data elements vary according to the construct of the Labels. The actual UID for Construct #1 consists of data such as Issuing Agency Code, Enterprise ID & Serial Number and for construct #2 it is Issuing Agency Code, Enterprise ID, and Part Number & Serial Number. On the other hand, the UID mark on the item consists of elements such as Enterprise ID & Serial Number with Data Qualifiers for Construct #1 and Enterprise ID, Part Number & Serial Number with Data Qualifiers for Construct #2.

The UID Label Construction
The marking of the UID labels should be according to particular format - construct #1 or construct #2. The UID standard requires that the data entered to the item s for the marking should be either of this formats for the barcode readers, scanner or verifier use the software that follows strict rules of UID constructions. If the data elements of the UID are not in the recommended format, it may be possible that the devices will not be able to decode the 2D data matrix barcode.

UID Labels Quality Assurance
As the UID labels are significant aspect of UID marking of the item and play a key role in the item management process, the quality of the labels are crucial feature of consideration. It is the responsibility of the contractors to investigate the manufacturing process of the vendors and present a Certificate of Conformance stating that the UID labels, nameplates or tags are manufactured keeping with the MIL-STD-130 standard. However, the marking process of the contractors is reviewed to ensure that there is no damage in the labels and the marking process is also not altered.