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Glossary of Manufacturing - Manufacturing terms Category: Agriculture and Industry Date & country: 27/04/2011, USA Words: 2096

VOR:
vehicle off (the) road, implying the need for immediate spares availability and fast attention by those making repairs.

VPM:
(1) Virtual Product Model; (2) Value Per Million opportuniities.

VRML:
Virtual Reality Modelling Language.

VRP:
Variability Reduction Process. Procedures and techniques aimed at increasing the reliability of a process and reducing the variability of manufactured units. Kaizen and Six Sigma on the shop floor!

VSM:
Value Stream Mapping. a tool used in lean production by which a manufacturing operation is analysed and the steps involved represented by standard symbols. There are some 20 symbols in the VSM 'language' . A Value stream map is referred to by Toyota simply as a material and information flow diagram.

WACC:
weighted average cost of capital.

Wages:
money paid by the company to an employee in accordance with his contract of service - see pay.

Wagner-Whitin Algorithm:
When a succession of manufacturing lots is arrived at to satisfy future material needs, what must be done next is to schedule their actual manufacture (ie decide the timing). The Wagner-Whitin algorithm can be employed to do so, to minimise the total of the stockholding costs incurred and the set-up/order costs of the actual plans themselves. The ...

Waiting Line:
See Queue (2)

WAN:
Wide Area Network (also see LAN).

WAP:
Wireless Application Protocol, the technical rules and procedures which allow mobile phones or hand-held computers to access the Internet.

Warehouse (see also Stores):
Usually a building furnished with racking for holding finished goods stock to enable customers' orders to be picked, packed and despatched. See also Bonded Warehouse.

Warehouse Identification:
for marking and labelling systems, see Beaverswood Warehouse Identification. Also see Vocabulary.

Warranty:
(1) In legal parlance, an express or implied term in a contract which is not central to the contract's main purpose. For example, in a contract to supply a machine tool, the supplier may undertake to provide 10 copies of the machine operating manual. The undertaking with regards the 10 copies is likely to constitute a warranty. Note that a warrant...

WASP:
(1) A schedule of procedures for dealing with job applicants at interviews .... thus: W = welcome; A = acquiring (knowledge); S = supplying (information); and P = parting. See Rodgers Seven Point Plan and Fraser's Five Point Plan. (2) White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, a term occasionally used in the US, not always respectfully, to denote citizens havi...

Waste:
A goal of lean manufacture and Just-in-Time is said to be the accomplishment of manufacture in which waste and wasteful practices have been eliminated. A prime example of waste put forward by exponents of lean and JIT is famously "inventory". Examples of wasteful inventory include WIP created due to the manufacture of production lots in e...

WastePak:
A collective waste compliance scheme associated with Packaging Waste (qv).

Wave Picking:
Also known as batch order picking, wave picking is the simultaneous picking of multiple customer orders, done to improve the efficiency of the overall picking operation ( for example, by reducing travelling time). As might be supposed, there are numerous schemes for carrying out wave picking. For example, a batch of picking requirements constitutin...

Waybill:
A document recording the destination, route and sender of a load, and, where applicable, the consignee. Waybills are often used for tracking the progress of a load (or tracing its whereabouts if it becomes lost).

WBS:
Work Breakdown Schedule.

WCDMA:
Wideband Code Division Multiple Access.

WCM:
World Class Manufacturing, a term used particularly by Richard Schonberger for Just-in-Time (qv).

Wealth of Nations (The):
see Manufacture of Pins (!).

WebPLAN:
A supply chain simulator (qv) for exploding bills of material very quickly.

Wedge:
(aka decoder) a hardware device that allows a user to connect a bar code scanner or other device (such as a weighing machine) to a computer terminal. To do so, a keyboard wedge interface is usually employed, allowing any data scanned to be output as ASCII characters directly onto a computer screen.

Weigh Counting:
this method of counting items dispensed from a stores or warehouse is used when items are small or light. It is normally done on purpose-made weigh counting scales. (The first thing to note is that a scale should be selected that has a sensitivity appropriate to the weight of the items being counted - ie if the items are light, the scales should b...

Weights & Marks:
Like controlled convergence, the weights & marks procedure is a means of evaluating and deciding between several contending options, where a true evaluation cannot be made on strictly quantitative terms. Examples of the use of weights & marks might be in deciding on a software package (from several alternatives), choosing a supplier (from a...

White Goods:
Such consumer items as fridges, freezers, washing machines and other relatively large domestic items. Contrast "brown goods".

White Noise:
In sales demand and forecasting, the presence in the demand data of random order placements not in accordance with the general pattern or level of demand. Contrast black noise, a humorous term meaning data processing and data file mistakes in demand data.

Whitehall:
a wide thoroughfare in London running south from Trafalgar Square for 600 yards to the Houses of Parliament, and along which are located the offices of almost all of the great departments of state within the UK, including The Treasury, The Ministry of Defence and The Foreign Office. The term "Whitehall" is used in UK jargon as a convenie...

Window Scheduling:
Synonymous with operation compression (qv) in leadtime management.

WKPI:
Warehouse Key Performance Indicator. Seven WKPIs are: productivity; despatch accuracy; stock records accuracy; dock-to-stock time; order cycle time; storage density; and degree of automation.

WLL:
Wireless Local Loop.

WMS:
Warehouse Management System - a comprehensive computer-based system which controls the movement and storage of stock within a warehouse and directs the warehouse's day to day operations. The functions of a proprietory WMS vary very considerably from package to package, but would be expected to include: (1) a variable location facility for the cont...

WO:
Work Order, qv.

Wooden Packaging:
see ISPM15.

Work Centre (WC):
a specific production facility, consisting of one or several men and one or several machines. Work centres may be organised within the factory by type (eg drilling machines) - functional organisation, or by families of parts made - group organisation.

Work Centre Efficiency:
for a given work centre, the ratio of standard hours to actual hours used, based on historical usage. Efficiencies are scrutinised by the shop supervisor as indicating which WC capacities should be adjusted.

Work Centre, alternate:
a work centre that can be used in case of an overload or breakdown at the primary work centre.

Work Centre, critical:
there are many definitions of this term. They include: (1) a WC working close to its maximum capacity; (2) a bottleneck WC; (3) a WC processing the work of an important part of the factory, where a breakdown would be especially serious; and (4) a WC comprising a unique machine for which no alternative is available.

Work Centre, Gateway:
a gateway work centre is one through which work arrives on the shop floor for the first time (ie the work is not already on the shop floor and so is not arriving from another work centre - ie it is not arriving from an intermediate work centre). The significance of a gateway WC is that the release of the work must be controlled to prevent queues a...

Work in Process (US usage):
see WIP

Work Study:
see Taylorism.

Working Stock
- see Stock (Working).

Works Order:
A manufacturing plan directed to be made on the factory floor by the authority of factory management, to help fulfil the master production schedule. In some circumstances, in a make-to-order environment, a works order may be individually raised to fulfil a specific customer order (note, however, that "works order" is not otherwise synony...

World Class Manufacturing (WCM):
a term used particularly by Richard Schonberger for Just-in-Time (qv).

WORM:
Write Once, Read Many. Spoken of in the context of the GEN2 protocol, used nowadays in conjunction with RFID tags. WORM software allows users first to encode the tags (= write once), which then become "locked", and after which can be read any number of times.

Written Down Value:
See WDV.

WWW:
World Wide Web, the Internet.

WYSIWYG:
pronounced wizzy-wig - "What You See Is What You Get", a computer development application which displays to the user the precise visual form of the output that will be produced when the development is complete.

Xbarbar:
(X with two minus signs on top of it) see Grand Average.

XGA:
Extended Graphics Adaptor.

XML:
Extensible Mark-up Language.

Yield:
The percentage of satisfactory output obtained in the manufacture of a batch of material in process industry manufacture (food, chemicals etc.). Thus if a batch of 1000lbs is processed and there is a 90% yield, 900lbs of good quality output is obtained. In engineering terminology, this might be expressed as 10% scrap (see scrap factor), although i...

Yokoten:
(Japanese) Information sharing across a plant; the sharing of common issues and responses.

YoYo Economics:
= You're On Your Own economics.

Zero Carbon Home:
a domestic dwelling built to very high environmental standards (for example, with respect to insulation) which has its residual energy needs provided by renewable sources of energy. In the UK, newly built zero carbon homes have been exempt from stamp duty from 2007.

Zero Defects:
A standard of performance or standard of manufacture which the American quality guru Philip B. Crosby says should be the goal of endeavour when speaking of "quality". Crosby's view is directly at odds with Deming's view: Deming states that the goal of quality is to achieve stability of the system giving rise to it, and that this system wi...

Zero Redundancy:
The expectation that the services and manufactured goods employed by a user or consumer will all be trouble free at all points of use - from acquisition to disposal - with regard to quality.

Zornig H. H. (Colonel):
A person whose name begins with Z, and at one time director of the Ballistic Research Laboratories, Aberdeen, Maryland. Credited with having popularised the expression Operating Characteristic, an important term used in sampling.

A Class Items:
A general meaning of this term is the most important items. When a group of products is analysed according to some criterion and the individual products in the group ranked - ie placed in order - according to the criterion used, it is common to subdivide the products in the ordered list into three categories. The "A" category, or A Class...

B Class Items:
Those products which are in the B Class when a group of products is analysed and ranked according to annual usage x unit value - see ABC Classification.

B2B:
Business to business. That is, companies which sell directly to other companies, rather than to private consumers.

B2C:
Business to Consumer. Contrast B2B above.

C Class Items:
Sometimes used as a general term for unimportant or insignificant items. Strictly, however, C-Class items are those products which fall into the C Class when a group of products is analysed and ranked in some way (ie placed in order in some way). The ranking is often in accordance with "annual usage x unit value" - see ABC Classification...

D Chart:
Demerit Chart (qv).

d2:
A shorthand calculation used in SPC.

D3
: (not d3!) A shorthand calculation used in SPC.

D4:
A shorthand calculation used in SPC.

e:
(inscribed on packages as relating to the weight or volume of contents) - see TNE.

E2:
A shorthand calculation used in SPC.

f-laws:
six cogent 'laws' which summarise the management philosophy of Systems Thinking, qv.

g:
the acceleration of a body due to gravity, being 32 feet per second per second ( = 9 metres per s per s).

H&SAWA:
The Health & Safety At Work Act, 1974 - The original UK legislation arising from the Robens Report, published in 1972 (latest legislation 1992 and 1999). The Act is what is known as enabling legislation, and led to the establishment of the HSC (Health & Safety Commission) and the HSE (Health & Safety Executive). Although there are thos...

I/O Control:
see Input/Output Control.

L/C:
See Letter of Credit.

L4L:
Lot for Lot (qv).

M
N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

M&A:
City talk for mergers and acquisitions.

M&S:
Marks & Spenser, a UK retail chain specialising in clothing and food, or Modelling & Simulation.

M-Day Calendar:
See Shop Calendar.

O'Leary's Corollary:
(to Murphy's Law) - Murphy was an optimist. (An alternative version states if everything seems to be going well, you have clearly overlooked something.)

p chart:
See attribute control chart.

Q Chart:
see Quality Score Chart.

R & D:
Research & Development.

S Curve
: see below.

S&OP:
see Sales and Operations Planning.

S&OP:
see above.

S:
Information System.

S-Curve:
S curves are often associated with the variation observed in product demand (or sales) over time. That is, plotting demand on the vertical axis of a graph and time on the horizontal axis, after the launch of a new product, demand begins at a low level with a small upwards trend month by month. After many months, the level and growth rate of demand...

T / A:
Trading As . A company that is legally incorporated as Company A carries out its business under the name of Company B (usually for historical or trademark reasons).

t test :
see Student's t test.

T&N:
Turner and Newall.

T/R:
Transmit/Receive.

u-Chart:
When a manufacturing operation is performed that affects a physical area of product of sizeable dimensions, but the extent of the area of product varies from one manufacturing operation to the next, it is not possible to track statistically the number of undesirable quality attributes from area to area because of the variation in their sizes. It is...

W3:
www (ie the world wide web). Also W3C, world wide web consortium.