| The United States Department of Defense (DoD) | | | | contractors must comply with these DoD standards |
| MIL-STD-130 standard for Unique Identification (UID) | | | | when selling products to the military. |
| marking has been established in order to allow for | | | | Basic UID marking parameters include unique |
| optimized asset, inventory and accounting tracking and | | | | identification numbers, bar codes and a 2D Data Matrix |
| control. The DoD has created detailed guidelines for | | | | symbol. This combination of human-readable and |
| product printing and marking for its tangible assets | | | | machine-readable marking is used for the rapid |
| located around the world. It can quickly compile | | | | accumulation of asset management information on |
| information collected from these identification codes | | | | physical military resources. This data can then be |
| for use in its centralized database. All government | | | | modified by military staff. |