Patent ID: 8346633

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for re-calculating low level codes for a set of materials, comprising: receiving, by a computer, a set of nodes, each node representing a material, the nodes being connected by a first set of edges that represents component-subcomponent relationships between the nodes; assigning, by the computer, a low level code to each node by: assigning low level codes to nodes that represent components with no subcomponents and have no edges pointing to them; and assigning sequential low level codes to nodes that do have edges pointing to them so that low level codes of nodes connected by edges from the first set of edges have sequential low level codes along a path of the edges; receiving, via a user interface of the computer, specifications of some of the nodes as co-products; generating, by the computer, a second set of edges connecting at least some of the nodes based on their specifications as co-products; assigning, by the computer, nodes which are connected by the second set of edges based on their specifications as co-products to equal groups; modifying, by the computer, some of the assigned low level codes of some of the nodes by assigning, to nodes within equal groups, a same low level code as at least one other node within the equal group; updating, by the computer, some of the assigned low level codes of nodes which are pointed to by edges from the first set of edges extending from nodes for which the low level code was modified to the same low level code as another node within the equal group; and outputting the modified low level codes to a user via a display of the computer.