Product codes are one of the first places a Titan setup either becomes easier to use or harder to maintain.
For a precast concrete company, product codes do more than identify items. They affect estimating, order entry, production, reporting, pricing, inventory habits, and how quickly new employees can find the right product.
A good product code system should be simple enough for daily use and structured enough to support the company as it grows.
Start With Product Families
Before naming individual items, group the work into product families that make sense to the business. A precast company may need separate families for manholes, pipe, box culverts, inlets, vaults, wall panels, custom structures, accessories, delivery charges, and special services.
The goal is not to create a code for every possible thought. The goal is to create a clear path so estimators and order entry users can find the right item quickly.
Keep Codes Short Enough to Use
Long codes may feel descriptive, but they often become difficult to read, type, remember, and maintain. If a code depends on too many abbreviations, only the person who created it will understand it later.
A better approach is to keep the product code compact and let descriptions, options, structures, and reports carry the extra detail.
Use Consistent Naming Rules
Consistency matters more than cleverness. Similar products should follow similar naming patterns. If one inlet family uses size first and another uses type first, users eventually slow down or choose the wrong item.
Common standards to define include:
- Product family prefix
- Size or shape convention
- Material or wall thickness convention
- Accessory and add-on naming
- Inactive or legacy item rules
Think About Reporting Before You Build
A product code is also a reporting decision. If management wants to review sales by product family, plant, structure type, or estimating category, the code and related Titan setup need to support that from the beginning.
Reporting should not depend on someone manually cleaning up messy item names after the fact. Clean product codes make cleaner reports possible.
Do Not Let Old Codes Stay Forever
Most Titan systems collect old habits over time. Legacy items, duplicate codes, one-off products, and confusing abbreviations can make the system feel heavier than it needs to be.
A code cleanup should identify what is still active, what should be replaced, what can be archived, and what needs a better structure before more automation is built on top of it.
Make the Code System Trainable
The real test is whether a new estimator or customer service person can learn the system without sitting beside the same expert for weeks. If the product code logic is trainable, the Titan setup becomes less dependent on one person.
A trainable product code system helps the whole company use Titan with more confidence.
Need Help Cleaning Up Titan?
Precast Simplified helps precast concrete companies review, clean up, and improve Titan setups so estimating, production, dispatch, invoicing, and reporting work from the same dependable information.
If your team is trying to improve a Titan setup, plan a VT3000 transition, standardize estimating, or reduce duplicate entry, request a Titan review and we can help identify the best next steps.
You can also visit the Precast Resources library for more Titan and precast operations guides.
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