Patent ID: 8256085

Claim:
A method of classifying a quantity of wire formed by a production process and stored on a storage device, wherein said production process includes at least one of loading a first material for producing the wire, cleaning the first material, drawing the first material through at least one die, plating the first material with a second material, and applying a surface coating to at least one of the first and second material, the method comprising: assigning the wire to a first class if a number of interruptions that occurred during the production process is equal to a first value; assigning the wire to a second class if the number of interruptions that occurred during the production process is equal to a second value; and applying indicia to the storage device to indicate which of the first class and the second class the wire belongs, wherein the first value and the second value are different, wherein each interruption corresponds to an unintended change in a speed of the production process.