Supply Chain Exam 1 Vocabulary Flashcards

Vocabulary practice flashcards covering essential supply chain, operations, quality management, and process analysis terms from the SCMT 364 review guide.

Business

An organized effort to produce and sell goods and services for profit while satisfying needs, with the central challenge of matching supply to demand.

Operations

Manufacturing and service processes that transform resources into outputs customers want.

Supply Chain

Processes moving information and materials to and from manufacturing and service operations.

Efficiency

Doing things right; minimizing waste and resource use.

Effectiveness

Doing the right things; achieving the intended goal.

Value

Quality divided by price, expressed as $\text{Value} = \frac{\text{Quality}}{\text{Price}}$.

Heterogeneous

Variable across encounters, commonly characteristic of services.

Homogeneous

Relatively standardized or alike.

Perishable Service Capacity

Unused service capability (such as an unused appointment or hotel room-night) that cannot be stored and sold later.

Straddling

Attempting to match a competitor's benefits while retaining an existing position, potentially adding incompatible features, services, or technologies.

Productivity

A relative measure calculated as output divided by input ($\text{Productivity} = \frac{\text{Output}}{\text{Input}}$).

Partial Productivity

Productivity calculated as output divided by one single input, such as labor hours or materials.

Multifactor Productivity

Productivity calculated as output divided by several inputs expressed in compatible units (commonly dollars).

Total Productivity

Productivity calculated as total output divided by all inputs combined.

Core Competency

A distinctive organizational capability that creates customer benefits, supports access to markets, and is difficult to imitate.

House of Quality

A matrix tool within Quality Function Deployment (QFD) that translates customer requirements into technical specifications.

Quality Function Deployment (QFD)

A structured approach to translating customer needs into design and production requirements.

Platform Product

A product category built from an established product foundation.

Process-Intensive Product

A product category where the product design depends closely on the production process, such as computer chips.

Statement of Work (SOW)

A project document that describes the work, objectives, and expected deliverables.

Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)

A hierarchical subdivision of a project into smaller work components.

Work Package

A manageable subdivision of project work.

Pure Project

A project organizational structure where a dedicated, self-contained team works full-time on the project.

Functional Project

A project organizational structure where work is organized within specialized functional departments.

Matrix Project

A project structure combining project and functional structures where resources are shared and individuals report to both project and functional managers.

Critical Path Method (CPM)

A technique that analyzes a network of activities and their dependencies to determine project timing.

Critical Path

The longest-duration path through a project network, which determines the earliest possible project completion date.

Slack

The duration of time an activity can be delayed without delaying overall project completion.

Capacity

The output a system can achieve over a unit of time.

Strategic Capacity Planning

Determining facility, equipment, and workforce capacity to support long-term competitive strategy.

Best Operating Level

The output level at which a process is designed to operate most effectively, commonly associated with minimum average unit cost.

Capacity Utilization

The ratio calculated as $\text{Capacity Utilization} = \frac{\text{Actual Output}}{\text{Best Operating Level}}$.

Economies of Scale

The principle that increasing operating scale can lower average unit costs.

Learning Curve

A model showing that time per unit tends to decrease as cumulative production volume increases.

Project Layout

A manufacturing layout where the product remains in a fixed location while people, materials, and equipment are brought to it.

Work Center (Job Shop)

A process layout where similar equipment is grouped by function and different jobs follow unique routes.

Manufacturing Cell

A layout where different machines are grouped to process a family of products with similar processing requirements.

Assembly Line

A manufacturing layout where discrete units move through a standardized sequence of workstations.

Continuous Flow

A manufacturing process structure where material is processed continuously, such as in petroleum refining.

Break-Even Quantity

The volume where total revenue equals total cost, calculated as $\text{Break-Even Q} = \frac{\text{FC}}{P - \text{VC}}$.

Cycle Time

The long-term average time between completions of successive units.

Throughput Rate

The number of completed units per unit of time, calculated as $\text{Throughput Rate} = \frac{1}{\text{Cycle Time}}$.

Run Time

Processing time per unit multiplied by batch size ($\text{Run Time} = \text{Time per Unit} \times \text{Batch Size}$).

Setup Time

The preparation or changeover time required before processing a batch.

Operation Time

The sum of setup time and run time ($\text{Operation Time} = \text{Setup Time} + \text{Run Time}$).

Flow Time

The total time a unit spends in a process, including active processing and waiting time.

Design Quality

The inherent value of a product in the marketplace, reflecting its selected features and performance capabilities.

Conformance Quality

The degree to which an actual product or service meets its established design specifications.

Prevention Costs

Quality costs incurred from activities intended to prevent defects, such as training and process improvement.

Appraisal Costs

Quality costs associated with inspecting, testing, and checking products or services.

Internal Failure Costs

Quality costs resulting from defects identified before product delivery, including scrap and rework.

External Failure Costs

Quality costs resulting from defects detected after delivery to the customer, such as warranty service, complaints, and lost goodwill.

Pareto Chart

A quality management tool that ranks problem categories by frequency or impact to highlight top priority issues.

Acceptance Sampling

Statistical evaluation of a sample taken from existing goods to determine whether to accept or reject an entire lot.

Common-Cause Variation

Routine, natural variation inherent within a stable production process.

Special-Cause Variation

Assignable, non-random variation resulting from a specific unusual source.

X-Bar Chart

A control chart used to monitor the average value of sample measurements over time.

R-Chart

A control chart used to monitor the range or spread of measurements within samples.

p-Chart

A control chart used to monitor the proportion of defective items in a sample.

DMAIC

A Six Sigma process improvement methodology consisting of five steps: Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control.

Cause-and-Effect Diagram

Also called a fishbone or Ishikawa diagram; a tool that organizes potential causes of a problem into structured categories.

Order Qualifier

A screening requirement or minimum standard necessary for a product or service to be considered by a customer.

Order Winner

A specific product or service feature that differentiates an offering and causes a customer to purchase it.

Efficient Frontier

A trade-off curve representing the best achievable combinations of operational performance given current resources and technology.

Triple Bottom Line

A framework assessing organizational performance across three dimensions: social (people), environmental (planet), and economic (profit).

Engineer-to-Order (ETO)

A supply chain strategy where product design and manufacturing are custom-executed after receiving a customer order.

Make-to-Order (MTO)

A supply chain strategy where product manufacturing is initiated only after receiving a customer order.

Assemble-to-Order (ATO)

A supply chain strategy where generic components are produced ahead of time and assembled after receiving a customer order.

Make-to-Stock (MTS)

A supply chain strategy where finished products are produced and stored prior to customer order receipt.

Customer Order Decoupling Point

The point in a supply chain that separates forecast-driven activities from activities triggered directly by customer orders.

Bottleneck

The resource or process step with the lowest effective capacity that constrains total system output.

Blocking

A operational condition where upstream work cannot proceed because downstream buffer space is full.

Starving

An operational condition where a work resource is idle because there is no incoming input to process.

Little's Law

A foundational queueing theory equation defining the relation between inventory, throughput, and flow time: $\text{Inventory} = \text{Throughput Rate} \times \text{Flow Time}$.