Producing World-Class Goods and Services

Vocabulary flashcards covering key concepts, planning issues, production methods, and control procedures from Chapter 10: Producing World-Class Goods and Services.

Fourth Industrial Revolution

The phase of digitization in the manufacturing sector that involves data, analytics, and improved robotics.

Research and Development (R&D)

Work directed toward the innovation, introduction, and improvement of products and processes.

Production

The creation of goods and services using the factors of production: land, labour, capital, entrepreneurship, and knowledge.

Production Management

All the activities that managers do to help their firms create goods.

Operations Management

A specialized area in management that converts or transforms resources (including human resources) into goods and services.

Facility Location

The process of selecting a geographic location for a company's operations.

Facility Layout

The physical arrangement of resources (including people) in the production process to enable workers to produce goods and provide services efficiently.

Assembly-Line Layout

A facility layout used primarily for repetitive production tasks.

Process Layout

A facility layout frequently used in operations that serve different customers' different needs.

Modular Layout

A facility layout configured to accommodate changes in design or customer demand.

Fixed-Position Layout

A facility layout where workers, equipment, and materials are brought to a stationary product, making the scheduling of work operations a major planning feature.

Materials Requirement Planning (MRP)

A computer-based operations management system that uses sales forecasts to ensure that needed parts and materials are available at the right time and place in a specific company.

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)

A computer application that enables multiple firms to manage all of their operations (such as finance, requirements planning, human resources, and order fulfillment) based on a single, integrated set of corporate data.

Purchasing

The functional area in a firm that searches for quality material resources, finds the best suppliers, and negotiates the best price for quality goods and services.

Just-in-Time (JIT) Inventory Control

An inventory system that keeps a minimum of inventory on the premises and ensures parts, supplies, and other materials are delivered just in time to go on the assembly line.

Quality Control

The process of consistently producing what the customer wants while reducing errors before and after delivery to the customer.

Six Sigma Quality

A quality benchmark that sets a standard of just 3.4 defects per million opportunities and detects potential problems to prevent their occurrence.

Statistical Quality Control (SQC)

The process managers use to continually monitor all phases of the production process and assure quality is built into the product from the beginning.

Statistical Process Control (SPC)

The process of testing statistical samples of product components at each stage of production and plotting the test results on a graph.

Excellence Canada

The leading authority in Canada on organizational excellence based on quality systems, innovation, and healthy workplace criteria.

International Organization for Standardization (ISO)

A non-governmental worldwide federation of national standards bodies from more than 160 countries that sets global measures to promote the development of world standards and facilitate international trade.

ISO 9001

The common name given to quality management and assurance standards requiring a company to determine customer needs, including regulatory and legal requirements.

ISO 14001

A collection of the best practices for managing an organization's impact on the environment.

Logistics

Activities that focus on getting the right amount of the right products or services to the right place at the right time at the lowest possible cost.

Supply Chain

The sequence of firms that perform activities required to create and deliver a good or service to consumers or industrial users.

Supply Chain Management

The integration and organization of information and logistics activities across firms in a supply chain for the purpose of creating and delivering goods and services that provide value to customers.

Form Utility

The value producers add to materials in the creation of finished goods and services, such as turning silicone into computer chips or flour into bread.

Process Manufacturing

The part of the production process that physically or chemically changes materials.

Assembly Process

The part of the production process that puts together components to make a finished product.

Continuous Process

A production process in which long production runs turn out finished goods over time.

Intermittent Process

A production process characterized by short production runs where the producer adjusts machines frequently to respond to specific customer orders and make different products.

Flexible Manufacturing

Designing machines to do multiple tasks so that they can produce a variety of products, leading to improved productivity and cost savings.

Lean Manufacturing

The production of goods using less of everything compared to mass production: less human effort, less manufacturing space, less investment in tools, and less engineering time.

Mass Customization

Tailoring products to meet the needs of a large number of individual customers.

CAD/CAM

The integration of computer-aided design (CAD) and computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) to custom-design and make products for small markets with very little increase in cost.

Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT)

A technique for monitoring the progress of production where users analyze the tasks to complete a project, estimate the time needed for each task, and compute the minimum time required to complete the whole project.

Gantt Chart

A bar graph, commonly prepared by computer, that clearly shows what projects are underway and how much of each project has been completed at any given time.