During school I worked at a place that dealt with clothing and I don't know how many inventory counts I did. Anyway there were coats labeled like GBF93-2332 for example.

  GB - George Bond (suppliers name)
  [WPMF] - Winter, sPring, suMmer, Fall
  [0-9]{2} - low 2 digits of the year, eg 93 was 1993
  [23] - 2 = mens, 3 = womens
  [0-9]{3} - style code.

The point is I had a fair bit of trouble because the codes were so simillar and I didn't know what they ment until I asked where they came up with the codes. After that the codes made a lot more sense and explained why the GBF92-2332 looked just like the GBF93-2332 to me. In particular after that those were the only codes that made sense. Most vendor's codes were just numbers which is fine for the computer but not so easy for people. Then again after a while I knew 12 or 13 digit SKUs off by heart. (SKU = Stock Keeping Unit if you're ever wondering. They look like a UPC, barcode and all. Yes I've had customers ask.)