A UID marking is required for all items delivered to the DoD that correspond to one of these criteria:
- Unit acquisition cost is $5000 or more
- designated by the acquiring activity as DoD serially managed, controled inventory, or mission essential.
- Consumable
- Permanent identification is necessary
- The item is a parent item that contains the embedded subassembly, component or part.

Specific guidance related to UID requirements can be found by referring to the following source:
http://www.acq.osd.mil/dpap/UID/

The set of data elements encoded in the datamatrix is driven by the method used to construct the UII which can be one of the following: (Examples coming from “UID 101” http://www.acq.osd.mil/dpap/UID/attachments/iuid-101-20060130.pdf).

- Construct #1, serialization within the enterprise identifier
This code is achieved by a combination of the following elements:
- Issuing agency code (IAC)
- Enterprise identifier (EID)
- Serial number

EID (Enterprise Identifier)	MFR 0CVA5		DOCVA5786950
Serial No.	SER 786950		IAC   EID        Serial no.

- Construct #2, serialization within the original part, lot or batch number
This code is achieved by a combination of the following elements:
- Issuing agency code (IAC)
- Enterprise identifier (EID)
- The original part, lot or batch number
- Serial number

EID (Enterprise Identifier)	(12V)194532636		UN1945326361234786950
Original part No .	(1P)1234		IAC      DUNS    Orig. Part N°    Serial no.
Serial No.	SER 786950

- DoD recognized IUID equivalent
For more information, refer to “Appendix D: The Mechanics of Item Unique Identification” page 48 of the “DoD Guide to Uniquely Identifying Items, Version 1.6” that you can find on the following link:
http://www.acq.osd.mil/dpap/UID/attachments/DoDUIDGuideVer1.6.pdf

 Concatenated Unique Item Identifier (UII) Construction (within Format Codes 05, 06, and DD with the various data qualifiers) :

Example of semantic and syntax construction for Item Unique Identification:

- Construct #1 – serialization within the enterprise identifier by manufacturer

The UII data elements would be encoded as follows:

[)>^R_SDD^G_SMFR 0CVA5^G_SSER 674A36458^R_S^EO_T

Where:

[)>
^R_S = the message header consisting of a three-character compliance indicator and the format trailer character RS to indicate the end of a data format envelope.
DD= a special DoD specific format header, which indicates Text Element Identifiers (TEI) are being used in the collaborative solution.
^G_S= a data element separator used between data fields (Group separator)
MFR= Text element identifier (TEI) for manufacturer CAGE (Commercial And Governement Entity) code.
0CVA5= CAGE code
SER= TEI for Serial number within the enterprise identifier
674A36458= serial number enterprise identifier
^EO_T= a message trailer which identifies the end of the message within the data stream (End of Transmission)

These different methods used to construct the Unique Item Identifier (UII) are embedded in our marking equipments and easy to set thanks to our powerfull softwares.

Here under the example with the UID interface of our T700W marking software: