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Manufacturing : Jargon buster

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  1. Overview
  2. Job roles
  3. Entry and progression
  4. Typical employers
  5. Opportunities abroad
  6. Future trends
  7. Jargon buster

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Case studies

  • Advanced manufacturing - the production of technologically complex products using high-level design skills.
  • B2B - business to business. Refers to trade or business done between businesses, rather than between a business and the general public.
  • B2C - business to consumer. Refers to trade or business carried out with a customer for their own use, rather than with another business.
  • Capacity requirements planning (CRP) - the process which determines the amount of labour and/or equipment resource required to meet the planned level of business.
  • Computer aided design (CAD) - use of a computer to aid in the design and/or production of drawings of parts.
  • Critical resource - anything which could limit the company's ability to accept an order from a customer.
  • Enterprise resource planning (ERP) - a computer planning system that uses the manufacturing resource planning (MRPII) principles but in addition should have product configuration facilities, quality assurance management and resource planning for the non-manufacturing areas such as plant maintenance and human resource planning.
  • FMCG - fast-moving consumer goods, e.g. food and drink.
  • GDP - gross domestic product - the economy’s total income accruing from output; the market value of all goods and services produced within an economic area over a given period of time.
  • Global value chain - the full range of activities involved in creating, producing and delivering a product, when divided among several companies and spread across the world.
  • Just in time (JIT) - the progressive reduction of wasteful activities i.e. anything that adds cost but not value to the end product. Examples include any production or delivery in excess of requirements, movement of parts and inspection that is not integrated into the process.
  • Kaizen - continuous improvement by small changes.
  • Kanban system - a means to achieve just-in-time (JIT) production. It works on the basis that each process on a production line pulls just the number and type of components the process requires, at just the right time.
  • Lead time - the uninterrupted time needed to manufacture a part under normal circumstances or the time required by a vendor to supply an item to their customer.
  • Lean manufacturing - the reduction to zero of all waste - resources, time and processes in production - in order to maximise productivity.
  • Manufacturing resource planning (MRPII) - the integrated planning of a company's material, equipment and people to meet the business plan.
  • Milestones - achievable short-term targets at which it is possible to evaluate progress towards a final objective.
  • Supply chain management (SCM) - the control of the supply of parts from vendor through to customer.
  • Total quality (TQ) or total quality management (TQM) - the culture of an organisation where continuous improvement is integrated into all activities with the objective of improving the quality of all business processes. Tools include process charts, pareto analysis, cause and effect diagrams, histograms, run diagrams, check sheets and statistical process control.
  • Work centre - people or equipment (resources) which may be treated as one resource for capacity planning purposes.
 
 
 
AGCAS
Written by Ivana Morton-Holmes, AGCAS
Date: 
August 2011
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