Copy of `Glossary of Manufacturing - Manufacturing terms`

The wordlist doesn't exist anymore, or, the website doesn't exist anymore. On this page you can find a copy of the original information. The information may have been taken offline because it is outdated.

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

Durability:
the degree or length of use of an object until its replacement becomes preferable to its repair.

DUT:
Device Under Test.

Duty of Care:
In common law, the precept that one should take reasonable care to avoid acts or omissions which can reasonably be foreseen as being likely to injure his neighbour. One's neighbour is anyone closely and directly affected by what he does or fails to do. Note that the duty of care is a civic one, not a requirement imposed by statute law. If the citi...

Duty Stamp:
A 25mm diameter circular label, either self-adhesive (freestanding labels - type A) or incorporated into a bottle label itself (type B), to be afixed to packages and goods containing alcohol and stored in the UK, or (from January 2007) offered for sale in retail outlets. Companies required to register with the Duty Stamp scheme, through HM Revenue...

Duty:
A tax levied by a government, especially in relation to exports; imports; the sale of alcohol and tobacco; the issue of licences; and on the estates of deceased persons. Import duty is a complex area of taxation (itself a complex subject) and, as well as taxation policy, involves foreign relations and treaties.

DVD:
Digital Versatile Disk. In the consumer market, machines capable of playing DVDs - ie DVD players. DVD players are either "non-recordable" or, far more desirably, "recordable", these being capable of also recording TV programmes, not merely playing pre-recorded material.

DW:
Data Warehousing.

Dynamic Despatching Rule:
A despatching rule (qv) whereby a job's priority is calculated in accordance with its timeliness and progress through the shop at the moment the calculation is made. The application of a dynamic despatching rule seems to presuppose the existence of a shop floor data feedback system to obtain data on timeliness and progress to be obtained. See also...

Dynamic Market (The):
An acknowledgement that buyers and sellers in the marketplace are forever seeking to improve their positions by taking new and alternative courses of action. The company that does not move on is liable to find itself bypassed by events.

Dynamic Programming:
See Mathematical Programming.

Ea, or Each or "Eaches":
the numeration of units or objects simply by the number of them present, rather than by their weight, volume or by some other physical attribute of them. For example, our stock of oranges might be expressed as 112 lbs (their total weight), or as 259 eaches (the total number of oranges present). See millihelen.

EAN:
European Article Number, an international convention of product coding used in the retail groceries business, and prominent in bar code applications.

Easter:
Eastertime in the Christian calendar comprises two days of very considerable significance: (1) Good Friday, the commemoration of Jesus' crucifixion, and (2) Easter Sunday, two days following, the commemoration of Jesus' resurrection. In the UK, Easter is a public holiday, and includes Easter Monday, the day following Easter Sunday. (Note that the ...

EAT:
Employment Appeal Tribunal, a UK Government body.

EBITDA:
in company finance, Earnings Before Interest, Tax, Depreciation and Amortisation. A company's EBITDA closely approximates its cash flow, and consequently allows managers and others to see clearly, at once, the amount of money the company brings in, and, therefore, what level of debt repayments it can afford.

EC
: Electronic Commerce.

Echelon (pronounced eschelo
A logical level of a distribution network. The lowest logical level is the place from which stock is originally distributed to the network (ie usually, the factory, often called Level 0). The next echelon perhaps comprises the regional warehouses served directly by the central (master) source of supply (Level -1). The next echelon after this may c...

ECIA:
Engineering Construction Industry Association, a UK body.

ECM:
Engineering Change Management.

ECN:
Engineering Change Notice (ie synonymous with ECO).

ECO:
Engineering Change Order.

Economic Order Quantity:
When raw material stock is ordered from a supplier, two classes of cost are incurred apart from the cost of the material itself (ie apart from the invoiced amount). These are: (1) the costs incurred literally in placing the order itself and seeing to its delivery, unloading and putting away; and (2) the costs of holding the stock in store before i...

ECP:
Engineering Change Proposal.

ECR:
(1) Engineering Change Request (qv); (2) Efficient Consumer Response.

ECSC:
European Coal and Steel Community, a trading block of six countries promoted and launched in 1950 through Robert Schuman of France (though largely devised by Jean Monnet).

EDA:
Electronic Document Access, or Electronic Design Automation.

EDI:
Electronic Data Interchange. The transmission of data from one computer to another, usually involving different companies (ie the buying company, or rather its order placement system, and the supplying company, or rather its order processing system) and usually involving also substantial distances. EDI is often used as an expensive fax facility by...

EDIFACT
: EDI For Administration, Commerce & Transport. EDIFACT is an EDI "protocol" ... ie a technical standard for the transmission of EDI messages over telecommunications links.

EDQ:
Economic Delivery Quantity - synonymous with an economic order quantity, qv.

EDSAC:
The world's first operational computer, commissioned at Cambridge University, UK, in 1949.

Edsel, (The):
The name of a now notorious model of car launched by Ford in 1957 that proved to be a small disaster in the marketplace. Ford overspent on the development of the model, and sold so few (110,000 in its lifetime) that the economic losses threatened the company. The Edsel is used in business studies to illustrate that even the slickest marketing and ...

EEF:
The Engineering Employers' Federation, a lobbying body with 6000 member companies ("The Voice of UK Manufacturing Industry"). Visit www.eef.org.co.uk.

Effectivity Date:
The date on which an intended engineering change is to come into effect. Bill of materials software is usually able to hold alternative product structures, one structure being the current one and the other being an impending second one, the structure having a specified effectivity date. When the effectivity date is reached, the second structure co...

Effectivity Quantity:
A problem in making an engineering change on a particular date is usually that in doing so, the old material still in stock is thereby made obsolete, since it is not required in the newly constituted bill of materials. To counter this problem, bill of materials software has been written whereby an engineering change comes into effect not on an eff...

Efficient Consumer Response (ECR):
Quick response to changed requirements in the consumer market, especially in retail. Examples of the activities which must be addressed are: product innovation; replenishment of stocks; and speedy communications.

EFI:
Electronic Freight Invoice.

EFQM:
European Foundation for Quality Management. The EFQM's quality model consists of 5 "enablers" (leadership, strategy, people, partnerships and resources) and 4 "results" (customers, people, society and key performance indicators).

EFT:
Electronic Funds Transfer.

EFTA:
European Free Trade Association, an organisation that the UK applied to join in 1959.

EIS:
Executive Information System.

Elasticity (of demand):
A term used in economic theory to describe the extent to which the demand for a good will change as its price changes. Goods are said to be price elastic if demand is considerably affected by changes in price (eg cars, furniture and luxury items). They are price inelastic if demand changes very little on a price alteration (eg necessities such as s...

Electronic Data Interchange:
See EDI.

Elimination of Waste:
see Waste.

ELV:
End of Life Vehicle.

EMAS:
Employment Medical Advisory Service, a UK body, being the medical services division of the Health & Safety Executive, and comprising a national network of 200 or so doctors and nurses undertaking medical examinations of employees referred to it and covered by the Chemical Works Regulations 1922 and others.

EMC:
Electromagnetic Compatibility.

EMI:
(1) Early Manufacturing Involvement, or (2) Electronic Magnetic Interference, or (3) Electric and Music Industries PLC, the large, well-known music publishing company.

Employee Suggestion Scheme:
see Kaizen Teian .

Employee:
a person employed by another person or by a company. It is not always immediately obvious if a person is an employee or not. For example, is a boy who is promised

Employment Rights Act (1996):
Among other things, it is required under this law to send to a new employee, within two months of his starting work, a written statement containing basic particulars of his contract of employment, such as his rate of pay, hours of work, job title etc..

EMQ:
Economic manufacturing quantity. The (ideal) amount of material it is calculated should be manufactured to minimise the overhead cost of set-up (see SMED), the subsequent cost of stockholding and other costs. The EMQ is related to the EOQ, but is in fact an even more dubious concept. For one thing, the amount to manufacture should surely be dictat...

EMS:
Environmental Management System, or Electronic Manufacturing Services.

EMU:
European Monetary Union, a doomed enterprise. See Euro.

End Item:
A finished product.

End of Life Legislation:
see WEEE.

Engineering Change Committee:
A group of managers charged by the company with managing engineering changes, the committee's constitution typically comprising personnel from engineering (technical), sales & marketing, production, purchasing and others. If such personnel are not literally on the committee, individual members of the committee may be charged with representing ...

Engineering Change:
An alteration made to the bill of materials. Examples are the replacement of one component by a substitute component; a change in the usage of a component by the higher level part using it; and substitutions and amendments made to whole sub-assemblies, assemblies and raw materials. To preserve product design integrity; to manage material plans and...

EOQ:
Economic Order Quantity - qv.

EPC (or ePC):
electronic product code, a code assigned to an item through the medium of a radio frequency identification tag. Standards for ePCs are being rapidly developed as RFID tagging becomes more common. EPCs themselves are assigned to companies by EPCglobal, and comprise three sections: (1) a manufacturer's number - the company's number assigned to membe...

EPCglobal
(or ePCglobal): a division of The Uniform Code Council, an international standards body, which has developed a standard for EPCs in support of RF tagging. EPCglobal is responsible for assigning blocks of numbers to member companies for use in their own internal assignment of ePC tag numbers, within their own RFID applications. ePCglobal has also d...

EPOS:
Electronic Point Of Sale - the recording of retail sales at the till in the store/shop on a data storage device, and its communication to a central controlling point, possibly for the purpose of direct stock replenishment.

Equity:
(1) the value of ordinary shares issued by a company (or a person's own particular shareholding); (2) in law, a person's original financial position (see misrepresentation); (3) "fairness". Also see Private Equity.

Equivalent Products:
in the process industries, two or more products made at different manufacturing sites may be chemically identical (or very nearly so), but for costing and control purposes may have different product codes and names. In materials planning, one of the equivalent products can be nominated as the "primary product". Total requirements are the...

ERA:
Electronic Remittance Advice.

Ergonomics:
The science or study of the interaction of a person and a machine or system. For example, the study of the checkout arrangements provided by a supermarket for its check-out personnel, and the study of a new product, such as a newly designed can opener, as it will be operated by a consumer. Attention to ergonomic design can have a significant effec...

Erotic Gherkin, The:
See Building the Gherkin - The Swiss Re* Tower in the City of London, home to the Baltic Exchange. (* 'Re' is pronounced 'Ree', and stands for re-insurance.)

Error (systematic):
an error in measurement attributable to a wrongly calibrated measuring device, the device giving a reading that is consistently too small or too great.

Error (true):
The difference between a measured value and the corresponding true value. In metrology, true value is almost never known. However, certain well-known measured values such as the universal gas constant R or the acceleration due to gravity g have been established with such thoroughness that the published values of them can be regarded as "true&q...

Error Addback:
This technique is also called "consuming the forecast" as it relates to a product made to stock. (But see also Consumed Forecast (Make-to-Order).) When the projected stock balance of a product being evaluated during master schedule management falls below the safety stock level of the product, a rescheduling message is not generated. Safe...

Escow:
To illustrate escrow, consider two football supporters Algernon (who supports Aston Villa) and Bertram (who supports Birmingham City). The two football teams are to meet each other in the cup final on May 3rd, and the two fans each bet the other

ESE
: Environmentally Sustainable Electronics.

ESFR:
Early Suppression, Fast Response. A preferred type of sprinkler system often now installed in warehouses and industry generally. Two superior characteristics of an ESFR system are a faster response time and a heavier water discharge. Faster response eliminates the need with conventional sprinklers for in-rack siting of sprinkler heads. Because ESF...

Ethics:
Rules of conduct governed by the morals, or values, of a company or institution or individual. Morals or values are what are held to be guiding principles, such as adherence to the law, concern for health and safety, the eschewing of racial prejudice etc.. The rules of conduct, or ethics, can consequently be written down as an ethical code - a set...

ETO:
Engineer To Order.

EU:
European Union, an organisation founded on 1950s ideas and lacking in democratic accountability or any semblance of patriotic support by the citizens it puports to represent. The EU seems opposed to free and unfettered competition and the dominance of the competitive market - ie the traditions of the UK (and the US). Instead, it appears to value r...

Euro:
an ultimately doomed unit of currency that will one day hopefully collapse into its component parts (one size cannot fit all). The currency was made up of the combined currencies of the previous currencies of European Monetary Union members, namely Germany (Deutschmark), France (Franc), Italy (Lire), Holland (Guilder), Spain (Peseta), Portugal (Pe...

EVA:
Economic Value Added.

Evaporating Cloud, The:
An analogy in the Theory of Constraints employed by Eliyahu M.Goldratt, the Israeli manufacturing guru also associated with the OPT software. When seeking to resolve a conflict or remove an obstacle to progress, the seeming impossibility of doing so (= the cloud) should be analysed and expressed in precise terms. The assumptions relating to them ca...

EVM:
Earned Value Management.

Evolutionary Development:
In order to eliminate the risks inherent in big-bang implementation (qv), Tom Gilb and others recommend that systems should be designed with very small building blocks, using so-called "open ended system architecture", including small non-complex database structures. More importantly, such systems should be delivered (ie implemented) in ...

Evolutionary Operation (EVOP):
the running of "experiments" on a process while it is in actual operation. EVOP studies are designed to be conducted by operators on a full-scale manufacturing operation while the process produces (good quality) output.

Exception Logic:
See Manufacturing Logic.

Exception Message:
See Manufacturing Logic.

Exchange Curve:
A graph showing two individual curves. If the two axes of the graph are variable X and variable Y, then (1) for the first curve, as the values on axis X increase, the corresponding values on axis Y decrease, and (2) for the second curve, as the values of X increase, the values of Y also increase. A prime example of an exchange curve is the EOQ cur...

Exclusion Clause:
An exclusion clause is an attempt within a contract between buyer and supplier to excuse one party or the other from carrying out its contractual obligations or limit the party's liability for having failed to do so. Regardless of the fact that the contract was signed by both parties, first consideration as to the validity of the clause must be whe...

Expectation:
A statistical term meaning the average probability of a chance occurrence. For example, there are 11 possible scores from throwing two 6 sided dice. The most frequent occurrence, having 6 possibilities out of a total of 36 possible scores is a score of 7. 7 is thus said to be the expectation. See also partial expectation.

Expeditor:
A shop floor worker charged with speeding up the progress of a particular works order, usually by attaching a red ticket to expedite its queue or move priority, and perhaps by discussing with the foreman whether other action could be taken. (See Leadtime Management.)

Expenses:
In relation to product costing, expenses are expenditures incurred other than those relating to materials or labour. Examples are heat, lighting and packaging. Expenses may be direct or indirect.

Experiential:
pertaining to experience, an adjective used in connection with Bayesian Forecasting and Bayesian Statistics.

Explosive Environment:
a physical environment such that there is a danger of explosion is classed either as "Zone 1" - being where an exposive atmosphere is likely to be present, or "Zone 2", where an explosive atmosphere is not likely to be present under normal operating conditions.

Exponential Smoothing
#NAME?

Exposures:
The number of times the inventory level of an item reaches a low point prior to its replenishment, obtained by A/q, where A is annual usage and q is the replenishment quantity.

Express Terms (legal):
Terms of a contract which are expressed - ie written down, rather than merely implied. Implied terms by contrast are not written down - they are assumed to exist either by commonsense or by the custom and practice of the trade. See also implied terms.

External Set Up Time:
In changing over a machine from the manufacture of one product to the manufacture of the next, the external set-up time is the duration of time required to carry out activities preparatory to the set-up, but while the machine is still working on the previous product (or after work has commenced on the next product). Examples of external set-up act...

Extrinsic Forecasting:
The employment of external intervention in forecasting (eg manual adjustments) and / or the employment of independent data (ie the use of a leading indicator). Independent data are data of the type other than the data being forecast - for example, one might be forecasting sales of paint brushes based on established sales of paint. In this case, th...

EXW (followed by a named place):
Ex-works - one of the 13 Incoterms. The seller has fulfilled his obligations when he places the goods at the disposal of the buyer at the seller's premises or some other previously designated place (such as the seller's factory), with immediate wrapping (ie not wrapped for a journey), not cleared for export and not loaded on any collecting vehicle...

FA:
Flexible Automation.

Fab:
Jargon for a semiconductor manufacturing plant.

Fabrication:
Literally, "manufacture", the term being used usually in relation to the operations involved in the manufacture of a component rather than in the manufacture of an assembly or final product.

Factor (in ANOVA and DOE):
A set of conditions that has an effect on a system and which can be varied or controlled to observe the effect on the system in question. For example, the incidence of office invoice errors per 1000 invoices issued may be the observed result, and the factor under which they occur (ie the set of conditions) may be the employment of untrained invoic...