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

GDP (Gross Domestic Product):
See Glossary entry below.

Gearing:
company indebtedness, defined by the relationship between the funds provided by the company's ordinary shareholders, and funds carrying a fixed interest charge or against which a dividend must be paid.

GEC:
General Electric Company. There are, or were, two companies of that name. First, there remains the rock-solid trillion dollar US company. Alas, the multi-million

Gemba:
Gemba is Japanese for the "actual place" or workplace. In the context of manufacturing, this is taken to mean the factory floor - the real place where activity takes place and where product itself is made. Gemba keiei (pronounced gemba "K" - "A") means managing the workplace as a physical entity and business (rather t...

GEN2:
Gen 2 is a protocol (ie a set of standards and rules) issued by the EPCglobal committee for formulating data to be used in an RFID radio environment. The GEN2 protocol governs the air interface standard (ie the frequency at which data are transmitted), the data structure of the EPC number, and the RFID network rules. GEN2 has a "WORM" ca...

Genchi genbutsu!
Japanese for Go and see for yourself - go to the "gemba" (the actual workplace - see above) and see what is really happening!.

General Stores:
the stores, or stock room, itself. Often the term excludes stocks of tools (which are in the tools store) and stocks of finished goods (which may be in the finished goods store, or warehouse).

GEO:
Geosynchronous Earth Orbit.

Ghz:
Gigahertz, or billions of cycles per second.

Giessen-Justus:
a type of schwundgeld dating from March 2004, originating in Giessen, central Germany.

Gilts (Gilt Edged Stock):
In the UK, gilts are "stock", or certificates, issued and sold by the UK Government. There are an extremely large number of such stocks issued by the Government to raise funds, with different maturity dates, different rates of interest (some rates being linked to indexes such as the RPI (retail price index)) , different redemption prices...

Gimbal Tag:
a perforated cardboard tag about 2 inches square attached to retail objects, especially clothing, and used by stores and distributors to gather statistics on sales. Now defunct.

GIS:
Geographic Information System, or Graphical Information System

GKN:
Guest, Keen and Nettlefold, a UK engineering company.

Globology Revolution:
a term coined by one Peter Oppenheimer of Goldman Sachs to mean the beneficial impact of technological change, globalisation and the emergence of the "BRIC powers", in combination, on the world's economy.

GMROI:
Gross Margin Return On Investment.

Goal, The:
The Goal is a novel centred round a manager who optimises his bottlenecked production output so as maximise his profits. The book failed to win the Nobel prize for literature but nevertheless outsold most novels that did, and was written to promote the OPT planning system (qv). The Goal's existence is known to all management consultants, some of w...

Golden Zone:
Stores and warehouse jargon for the most easily picked storage locations, typically those close to a central location and between waist and shoulder height. Stores experts also talk of silver and bronze zones.

Gompertz Curve:
see S-Curve.

Good Count / Bad Count:
in relation to stock records accuracy, qv.

Goodwill:
A financial value, being the difference between the company's value as "a going concern" and the fair value of its individual assets as recorded on the balance sheet.

GOQ:
Genuine Occupational Qualification.

Government:
A ponderous body uniquely lacking in visionary business perspective and almost incapable of initiating reasonable legislation capable of benefiting consumer and business alike. (Roy L. Harmon, ReInventing The Warehouse, The Free Press, 1993, p37.) There are other definitions of Government, such as "the body of persons charged with...

GPRS:
General Packet Radio System, a means of increasing the speed of data communications on a mobile phone network.

GPS:
Global Positioning System.

Grading (of a Job):
see Classification of Jobs.

Grain & Feed Association:
The City of London exchange dealing in agricultural produce.

Grand Average (Xbarbar):
The mean or average of a number of sample means. Suppose the values in Sample 1 were 3, 4 and 5, and the values in Sample 2 were 6, 7, 8. The mean value of Sample 1 is 4.0 and the mean value of Sample 2 is 7.0. The grand average is thus 5.5.

Great Circle Formula:
A trigonometric relationship used in navigation, especially in relation to aircraft, to compensate for the unsymmetrical curvature of the Earth. The formula may be necessary in distribution planning in very large geographic networks.

Green Belt:
(1) A team member of Six Sigma quality improvement project, the team being led by a Black Belt; (2) in the UK, a rural area protected from industrial and housing development.

GRN:
Goods Received Note, a document raised by a receiving company verifying that goods have indeed been received. Note that the receiving company has no legal obligation with respect to the goods beyond the reasonable safe keeping of the delivery - see Receipt (of goods).

Gross Domestic Product (GDP):
The GDP of a country is the total value of the goods it produces and the services it provides in one year. For the UK, the GDP is $1.25 trillion (2000).

Gross National Product (GNP):
The GNP of a country is its Gross Domestic Product (qv), plus the total of net income from abroad.

Gross:
one meaning is entire and whole, as opposed to net. Gross also means a dozen dozen (eg a gross of eggs = 144 eggs). There are numerous other meaning given in the OED.

Group Forecast:
The aggregate forecast demand for a group of products. The group is almost always a well-defined product marketing group (for example, "dairy products", "office consumables"). In order to aggregate the individual forecasts, they are usually expressed in monetary terms. Group forecasts are encountered in Sales & Operations Pl...

Group Oriented Manufacture:
The physical arrangement of plant on the factory floor so as to create many small flow lines, each flow line being dedicated exclusively to one or a few manufacturing groups of products. In contrast, see Functionally Oriented Manufacture and Product Oriented Manufacture.

Group Select:
A feature of an RFID tag reader employing GEN2 technology whereby an RFID reader or interrogator is provided with the capability to seek and read groups of tags based on their specified data structure and ignore others.

Group Technology:
When a factory floor and the products made there are being converted from functionally oriented manufacture (qv) to group oriented manufacture (qv), it may be thought necessary (*) to employ a methodology to find which products should be assigned to which group flow lines. Group technology is just such a methodology, and employs formal methods for...

Groupage:
In distribution, for purposes of economy and efficiency, groupage is the practice of hauliers grouping together the loads of several customers for transport to a particular place. While the practice may be economical and efficient for the haulier, it may not be thought so by a particular customer, who sees his goods delayed until the haulier can m...

GSM:
Global System Mobile.

GT:
see Group Technology.

GTAG:
Global Tag, an international coding standard used in conjunction with electronic product codes in Radio Frequency Identification. See particularly GEN2.

GTT:
GEC - Plessey Telecommunications.

GUI:
Graphical User Interface.

Gulaosi:
Chinese for death by working too hard. The next time someone talks about outsoucing to China, they should think about those 24 hour shifts (*) in the Guangzhou factories of the Guangdong manufacturing region. (* Yes, really ... 24hours. Gulaosi is a not uncommon phenomenon in China.)

GUS Classification:
An unusual means of product classification intended to assist in inventory control (compare the use of ABC analysis to assist in cycle counting). G class products are general products widely used throughout the company; U class products are unique to one specific group of products or cost centre; S class products are specific to individual custome...

GUS:
Great Universal Stores - a large and long established UK mail order organisation, also moving into DIY via its acquisition of the Homebase retail chain.

HACCP:
Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points - the evaluation of potential sources of failure in a product under design - see also FMECA.

HAL:
Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computer, famously the "name" of the errant computer in Arthur C.Clarke's story 2001: a Space Odyssey.

Hallertauer
: a type of schwundgeld originating in November 2004 in Pfaffenhofen, Bavaria, Germany.

Hanami:
a social or business party organised in Japan to view the cherry blossom, the cherry blossom marking the eagerly awaited beginning of Spring and the start of the new school year. It is also the time when new employees are taken on in companies. Companies and clubs typically organise hanami as bonding occasions. They are not necessarily sober.

Harmonic-Analysis:
see Fourier Analysis.

Hash-Total:
One way of checking that a set of records or documents is complete, and that no individual document is missing, is to select an arbitrary data field on the record or document containing a number, the field selected being present on each record or document, and calculate the arithmetical total of such fields. This total is the hash total. Later, to...

Haulier:
A company which transports goods on behalf of customers needing such a service.

Hauling:
see kitting.

HAZOP:
Hazard and Operability Studies, a term encountered in design quality and failure avoidance.

HDB:
High Density Printed Board.

HDD:
Hard Disk Drive.

HDI:
High Density Interconnect.

HE:
Harsh Environment.

HEA:
Harsh Environment - Automobile, or Health & Education Authority (UK).

Health & Safety:
The existence of a safe and healthy working environment, its provision being prime moral and legal imperatives of the company. See H&SAWA.

Hedge:
In the commodities market, a hedge is the action taken by a buyer to protect himself against a price rise or the action taken by a seller to protect himself against a price fall. See "Future" and see "Speculator".

Hedging:
If it is required to buy commodities such as oil, copper or raspberries at a future date, the danger exists that at the future date when they are required, their price will be higher than the current price. One way the buyer can protect himself from this is to buy a "future" right to purchase the commodity (see Futures in the Glossary). ...

Hedonic Scale:
In the OED, hedonics is defined as the science of pleasure. An hedonic scale is one indicating pleasure and displeasure - for example, 0 on the scale might mean "very unpleasant", and 10 mean "sheer ectasy". If the scale is being used so that consumers can register their reactions on a form, say in a market survey of food taste...

Heijunka:
A Japanese word for "smoothing the waves of production", or, in more prosaic terms, setting up an even flow of manufactured product by establishing a succession of very small batches of production throughout the factory chain of manufacture. Accomplishing this is a major goal of Just-in-Time, or lean, manufacturing, and must be supported ...

HEM:
Harsh Environment - Military.

HEMT:
High Electron Mobility Transfer.

Heuristic:
In scheduling, an heuristic is a mathematically based search algorithm employed to determine a production schedule. More generally, a heuristic is any pragmatic procedure leading to an answer to an operational research question. An heuristic has also been defined as a rule of thumb that works! An example of a simple heuristic is a dynamic despatch...

HH:
Hand Held.

Hidden Factory, The:
The hidden factory expresses the notion that much of the endeavour of the company that is not quality minded is directed inadvertently to creating waste and performing wasteful tasks - examples of wasteful activities are the production of non-conforming products and the holding of excessive stock. The hidden factory is the extra useful, positive o...

Hierarchical Forecasting:
See Forecasting (Hierarchical).

Hierarchy:
A structure comprised of layers, or levels, each successively lower layer being subordinate in some way to the layer above it. In terms of management and the corporate organisation, the highest layer of the company hierarchy comprises the managing director. At Layer 2 are other members of the board. At Layer 3 below the board are heads of departme...

HIFO:
Highest In, First Out - a stock rotation system whereby the most expensive stock is issued first.

Hire Purchase (HP):
Similar to a leasing arrangement, but with two differences: (i) the company using the goods takes possession of them as owner at the end of the payment period; and (ii) the using company is also permitted to depreciate the goods over the time it pays for them. Since the company putting up the goods is consequently not able to depreciate them, unli...

Histogram:
A graph of vertical bars illustrating how the values of some particular phenomenon are distributed among all the possible values the phenomenon could take. On the horizontal axis of the graph are the ranges of the values, set out on the scale of the axis as so-called "class intervals". For example, the class intervals for people's ages m...

HMD
: Head Mounted Display.

Hockey Stick Theory
, devised by one Michael Mann, that predicted temperatures would suddenly 'flick' upwards to high levels. To achieve this effect theoretically, Mann constructed a computer model and processed the data available to him in a certain way employing mathematics that were bound to produce a 'hockey stick' effect regardless of the data employed.) The reas...

Hold Order (noun):
A works order on which work has been suspended for some reason by management (eg due to the non-payment of his account by the customer).

Homologation:
In manufacturing industry, the action of ensuring that a raw material that has been received has indeed originated from a specific certified supplier.

Honeycombing:
the often unavoidable creation of 'interstices', or empty spaces, within a stock storage system, perhaps due to partial pallet loads or depleted rows. The honeycombing factor is (net calculated capacity)/(gross storage capacity), and might take a value of 0.8 (though much higher in a fixed location storage system). A honeycombing factor cannot be ...

Horizon (Forecast):
in order to act as input to the master scheduling process, demand forecasts must be prepared out to the master schedule horizon, plus one month. (The extra month is needed because the master scheduling period begins after the instant in which the forecasts are prepared, even if that is only one day later.) See also bootstrapping.

Horizon (Master Schedule):
The period ahead for which the master schedule must be formulated. The minimum period of time is the sum of these two elements: (1) the maximum cumulative leadtime of materials manufacture, including the time to acquire raw materials*, and (2) the master schedule review period. Companies setting their MPS horizon too short will find that there are...

Hoshin Planning, or Hoshin Kanri:
Policy Deployment, or "Management by Strategy Deployment" - a term meaning the constant referral in setting goals and objectives, and in deciding measures of performance, to the declared overall strategic and policy aims of the enterprise. Hoshin is Japanese for "pointing the way" and Kanri means simply "manage...

Hot List:
A list of items which are urgently required for a current works order, the list having been compiled by informal means and requiring progress chasers to commence a search for them. The items are likely to be recorded in a little black book!

House of Quality:
In QFD (qv), it is common to draw up a matrix of Customer Requirements x Product/Service Features, indicating on the intersections of the matrix the degree the particular feature contributes to the customer's requirement. A very detailed version of the matrix can then be drawn up in the form of a block diagram bearing references to the original mat...

HOV:
High Occupancy Vehicle.

HP:
(1) High Performance, or (2) Hosin Planning (qv), or (3) Hire Purchase, or (4) Hewlett Packard, or (5) HP Sauce.

HPCC:
High Performance Computing and Communications.

HPPS:
High Performance Product Sector.

HPV:
High Production Volume.

HR:
see Human Resources.

HRM:
Human Resources Management - see Human Resources.

HRXpert:
A software package intended to assist a company in its application of the Hay Guide Chart (qv) and the Hay point-factor job evaluation system.

HSC:
Health & Safety Commission, a UK body. The HSC is empowered to write framework law in the field of industrial health and safety, and write its accompanying regulations and codes of practice. While there is a requirement to consult with industrial companies (a cosy arrangement), proposals are passed on a minister's signature without the scrutin...

HSE:
Health & Safety Executive, a UK body. The HSE is empowered to appoint factory inspectors and to investigate premises and the circumstances of accidents. The HSE may bring prosecutions before the courts. Question: How many HSE Inspectors does it take to change a lightbulb? Answer: None - it's too dangerous.

HSM:
Hierarchical Storage Monitor.

HTML:
Hypertext Markup Language.

HTTP:
Hypertext Transfer Protocol.

Hub:
the dictionary definition of a "hub", apart from being the central, solid part of a wheel, is a central point of revolution, activity, life, interest etc.. This definition is not far from the many alternative uses of the word in logistics. That is, in logistics, a hub may be a point at the centre of many distribution routes where goods a...