Unique part numbers for products with options

At this point, I'm looking for a general solution but may need specifics later on.

I have a customer who has invested in barcoding for his products. Each and every single item will have a unique part number and eventually labeled by a barcode.

The Product Model number is sufficient for a simple product but gets complex when options are added. Consider the following.

Red Hat - Model Num is 123

Now a red tee shirt:
Size small - 223
Size med - 224
Size large - 225

If the item is simply tee shirt, and color is an option
small, red - 323
small, blue - 324
med, red - 325
med, blue - 326
large, red - 327
large, blue - 328

This particular customer has products that where some have as many as six option types with 18 values for a total of 384 possible unique parts for a single product (dimensions in this case). From a user perspective, adding 384 different but extremely similar products to the cart is effectively unmanagable and useless to shoppers.

My question for the forum then, has anybody encountered similar situations and did you find a good solution? Of course, the extention of the problem and solution is inventory tracking which I understand is going to be in the next major ZC release.

Solutions anybody?

This is not currently possible... However, we have customers using the ### as part of the attribute option value to achieve this in a better fashion.

~Melanie