vitamin c. Crack those cryptic codes

Rifle through a catalogue of household and electronic appliances and you come across alphanumeric codes for each product, which you ignore. They are a mouthful, literally, and difficult to memorise. You probably won’t need them unless you have a complaint and the customer service executive asks you for the model number and then you are all a-scramble to find it, tucked away as it is in some remote spot on the back or underneath.

How do alphanumeric codes help customers? And what do they mean, to begin with?

To find out more, cat.a.lyst spoke to BSH Household Appliances Manufacturing, which makes the Bosch and Siemens brand of appliances. A spokesperson explains that these names are more for internal use than for the customer. However, they can be very useful when a customer wants to compare prices, he says.

There are no industry standards for naming the products, each company has its own sequence. Take this model name: WAK20260IN. The spokesperson explains:

W stands for washing machine.

A is for a front-loading series.

K is the ‘platform’ on which the machine is built, relating to a broad range of its size and the load it can carry. The platform can also indicate where and for which region this machine was made.

20 refers to the speed. In Bosch code, it stands for 1,000 RPM (rotations per minute). The washing machine’s drum rotates 1,000 times per minute. This is a measure of drying efficiency. The faster the machine spins, the drier the clothes will be when they come out of the machine. Many washing machines have RPM of 1000-1600 per minute.

2 is a type of control panel. It is a push button with LED display.

6 stands for a specific number of features. One, for instance, is no water spillage.

stands for the colour – silver/white

IN stands for the country in which the machine was produced. India, in this case.

If you’re a camera geek, you will probably know what all those letters and numbers on your camera lens mean. But if not, here’s an example: Take EF85MMF1.2L. This is from a Canon camera. Most camera makers offer their own lenses.

EF stands for focus/mount type, and stands for Electronic Focus. The Canon EF lens mount is used by SLR and digital Canon EOS cameras and can be used to accommodate a variety of lenses. The focal length, which determines how much the subject can be magnified, is 85mm.

F1. 2 is the maximum aperture, which controls the brightness, and L stands for Luxury series.

Many automobile companies go in for alphanumeric brand names – something that meets with much criticism – for their cars as the more conventional names are fraught with potential trouble. What may be meaningful in some languages and regions may prove to be disastrous for business in another. These letters and numbers usually refer to the type of car (sedan, coupe, SUV and engine size).