P

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

GO TO P, Pa, Pab, Pac, Paf, Pal, Pan, Par, Part, Pas, Pay, Pb, Pc, Pd, Pe, Per, Pes, Pet, Pf, Pg, Ph, Pi, Pick, Pip, Pl, Plan, Plas, Plu, Pn, Po, Pp, Pre, Price, Priv, Prn, Pro, Proc, Prod, Prof, Prog, Prom, Ps, Pt, Pul, Pur, Push, Pw, last entry

3PL: Third Party Logistics.

4PL: see Fourth Party Logistics.

p chart: See attribute control chart.

PA: Personal Assistant, or Power Amplifier or Perpetual Audit (= cycle counting).

PAB: see Projected Available Balance.

Pack from Make: See Make and Pack.

Packaging Manager: A manager connected with a consumer goods manufacturing or distribution organisation whose roles are: (1) to ensure that the company's packages meet the standards specified; (2) to develop new packages to fulfil new purposes or increase the competitive edge; (3) to investigate complaints of split or damaged packages, in order to confirm their validity and, if valid, their cause; (4) to liaise with package manufacturers in new developments; (5) to ensure compliance with the packaging waste regulations (qv) of the despised EU; and (6) to contribute to projects and initiatives to change and enhance package design throughout the supply chain.

Packaging Waste (Regulations): Regulations concocted by European Union officials in 1997 to promote a reduction in the amount of residual wrapping and protection material associated with the carriage and protection of goods. Packaging is defined as primary packaging (eg a glass bottle containing Chateau D'Yquem), secondary (or grouped) packaging (eg a smart wooden box containing the glass bottles of the wine), and tertiary packaging(eg a crate containing the secondary packages). Companies which are required to take action under the regulations are referred to as obligated producers, and include (say) manufacturers of bubble wrapping and packagers of sandwiches. An obligated producer's obligation (only an EU official could invent this) is calculated as "the amount of packaging handled " x "the activity obligation" x "the recovery target". Recovery targets are set by the organisation's reichsmarshalls with the EU; in the UK, acting gauliters are the Environment Protection Agency and the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA). To prove compliance, the company must obtain "package recovery notes" (PRNs) either from an authorised waste management company or through their purchase in the open market. As with most EU activities, there is widespread evidence that the regulations have caused an increase in the amount of packaging waste generated. Naturally, the evidence excludes account of the waste represented by the small army of officials needed to police the scheme. See also WEEE.

PAF: prevention, appraisal, failure. An acronym for an approach to ensuring quality not unlike FMECA.

Pallet: A structure consisting of a top and a bottom platform, the dimensions of which are standardised in the UK as 1000mm x 1200 mm. The platforms are referred to as boards. They are 6" to10" apart, being joined and supported by blocks, bearers and stringers. A load is placed on the pallet's top board, and the tines (or forks) of a fork lift truck inserted between the two boards, enabling pallet and load to be lifted and moved. Pallets are usually made from the wood of the Portugese maritime pine or, in the US, oak, but also nowadays of plywood (but see Plastic Pallets). The footprint of the pallet is the top board's dimensions as given above. Note that in the US, the standard platform is 48" x 40". The 'euro' pallet measures 1000 mm x 800 mm and the so-called Dusseldorfer pallet measures 800mm x 600mm (*). Non-standard pallets are used in the Far East, enabling companies to achieve greater economy of freight movement at the expense of storage costs (until 1969, there were some 1500 pallet varieties in the UK). See also the regulatory dangers of wooden pallets under ISPM15. See also Unit Load. Also see CHEP. For a brief discussion on pallets, including pallet racking, see sub-sections 1.3.2, 2.2 and especially 2.2.1 in the free on-line 'course' on stores/warehouse operations at this site. * The smaller Dusseldorfer pallet is being increasingly used in pharmaceticals distribution due to its ease of handling when being off-loaded from delivery vehicles.

Pallet Cap: a simple plastic object about 12" high, coloured bright yellow, devised by Hayley Shirley, placed on a pallet or structure, warning Fork Lift Truck operators not to stack further loads on top due to fragility.

Panama Canal: The famous 47 mile waterway that links the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, is located in the western Panamanian state of Darien. The name Darien is perhaps best known in English literature from the poem by Keats: ... when felt I like some watcher of the skies/ When a new planet swims into his ken/ Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes/ He star'd at the Pacific - and all his men/ Look'd at each other with a wild surmise/ - Silent, upon a peak in Darien. Except that it was not Cortez who first saw the Pacific from Panama. The momentous discovery in 1513 is due to the Spanish adventurer Vasco Nunez de Balboa (1475 - 1519). In the absence of a natural strait between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, the possibility of constructing a waterway was talked of from the very time of Balboa's discovery. The first attempt to do so, financed privately by the French and led by Ferdinand De Lessops, who had built the Suez Canal, ended in expensive failure. The second attempt, successful, by US Army engineers, was financed by the American treasury and championed by President Theodore Roosevelt. Although completed in 1914, it was not until the 1950s that the enterprise broke even. Approximately 300million tons of goods now pass through per year. The average toll paid by a large major vessel (eg a Panamax vessel carrying 4,500 containers) for passage is £36,000. Panama has now decided on a £2.7 billion enlargement and upgrade of the canal to permit the passage of ships with a length of 1,400 feet and a width of 180 feet. Intriguingly, there is an 86 feet difference in sea level between the Caribbean and Pacific seeboards on either side of the canal gates. For an excellent book about the Canal, see Portait of the Panama Canal, by W.Friar. For an equally good book published in 2007, see Panama Fever : the Battle to Build The Canal, by Matthew Parker (search Amazon UK).

Parameter: In writing a program for general use, a software programmer will usually need to specify formulae or system functions in a general way ... for example, "calculate the total requirements over the next X weeks". X is specified in the program, literally, as the variable "X", but is then made a parameter. In this case, in order to use the program, the system user must first specify a value for the parameter. (In this case, if he specifies "5", the program will calculate the total requirements over the next 5 weeks.)

Parametric Analysis: In product design and value engineering, the analysis of competitive products already on the market from the viewpoint of their physical characteristics (eg their capacity, speed, power, acceleration ...). Among other things, parametric analysis may reveal gaps in the market which the new product might fill. Parametric analysis is almost synonymous with "analysis of features" (qv).

Parent: (1) If product A is used to manufacture product B directly, product A is said to be product B's parent. See descendant. (2) In relation to company ownership, if Company Big owns all or most of the share capital of Company Little, Big said to be Little's parent (and Little is said to be a subsidiary of Big). Note that a quasi-subsidiary is a company which does not fulfil the share capital criterion of a subsidiary, but the strategic directions and profits of which are nevertheless controlled by Big, perhaps because of legal reasons.

Pareto Analysis: Vilfredo Pareto was an Italian economist and sociologist at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. In his treatise of 1924, he postulated that the consumer spent 80% of his income on 20% of the things he bought, and was indifferent as to the identity and type of the vast 80% of things accounting for only 20% of his income. This notion was taken up by H. Ford Dickie in 1951 in an article "Shoot for Dollars, not for Cents", and lead to ABC Classification.

Parkinson's Law: Put forward by C.Northcote Parkinson - Work expands to fill the time available for its completion. (Or as he might have said Stock expands to fill the space available for its storage!)

Part: A manufacturing item different from all others.

Part Number: A unique code, perhaps being alphanumeric, assigned to a product or part for identification purposes. See also The Brisch Classification system.

Part Period Balancing: a method of sequencing a required succession of manufacturing plans to allow for the unevenness over time in the net requirements of the product being planned. The term part period is the "carrying of one unit of stock for one period", and the technique involves arranging the sequence so as to minimise the total amount of stock carried and the total expense of setting up each individual plan to be manufactured. The actual carrying out of part period balancing can be carried out manually or through a spreadsheet. A superior method, however, is by computer employing the Wagner-Whitin Algorithm.

Partial Expectation: Safety stock is provided to guard against a specified proportion of forecast errors, the probability of which can be represented by a certain area under the Normal, or Gaussian, curve. Thus the probability of forecast errors not guarded against is represented by the area in the tail-end of the curve. The partial expectation is that point on the horizontal axis of the curve which bisects the unguarded area 50:50. This statistical term is also referred to as the linear loss function, and is encountered only in calulations involving safety stock.

Partial Requirements: The gross requirements are the sum of all quantities of material needed to support higher level plans. Partial requirements usually means those requirements needed to support just one particular plan of the many higher level plans at the higher level. In the example given under the Glossary entry for "gross requirements" (qv), of the gross the requirements for 27 motors, the partial requirements for the electric toothbrushes are 15 and the partial requirements for the electric pepper mills are 12 motors. See also net requirements.

PASA: The initials of the "Purchasing And Supply Agency" of the National Health Service.

PASCAL: Programme Applique a la Selection et a la Compilation Automatique de la Litterature, a programming language having its origins in Guess Where.

Passing Off: a legal term whereby a company adopts a name similar to the name of another firm in the same line of business, to cash in on the other's reputation. Passing off is a tort so that the other firm can sue in the courts for damages.

Passive Smoking: see Smoking (Passive).

Pay: see reward management, pay posture, pay structure, variable pay.

Pay Posture: When reference is made to the external jobs market in determining the rate of pay for a company job, it will be found, naturally enough, that the external pay rates for the job vary from company to company. In other words, the external market pay rate is, in reality, a scale from lowest to highest. The point on this scale chosen by the company in setting its own internal rate is known as its "pay posture", or pay position, and should be consistent from job to job. If the company chooses a high point of the scale, it will be known as a "good payer", and may receive job applications from better qualified job seekers as a consequence; if it chooses a low pay posture, it may be thought of as a "poor payer". However, in the UK, as in other countries, the pay posture that management often determines upon may be what it feels it can get away with, say, having regard to the company's geographic location. Perhaps here might be a fruitful area of research for academics: to investigate whether the choice of a low pay posture by a company is a false economy.

Pay Structure: A succession of interlinked, self consistent grades of pay - for example, Grade 1 (bottom); Grade 2; Grade 3; Grade .... Grade 20 (top). It might be supposed that the top rate of pay at Grade 1 is just below the bottom rate of pay at Grade 2, and so on. In fact, the interlinking of the grades within the structure is complicated by two factors: differentials and overlapping. A differential (qv) recognises that a job holder at the very top of one grade is worth more than a job holder at the very bottom of the next higher grade. The application of grade differentials of 20% is not uncommon. The greater the differentials, the fewer grades needed to cover the range of pay to be accomodated by the pay structure - see Broadbanding. Overlap (qv) is a measure of the extent that two grades overlap - a 20% overlap is commonly found. Despite the need for consistency throughout the company, large companies are likely to have in place two or even three pay structures to cover all staff.

PBT: Persistant, Bioaccumulative and Toxic - ie a poison which builds up in the body and the levels of which in time become toxic. Two examples are arsenic and benzene. Benzene can be absorbed into the body over time through the skin, which is why those working in chemical laboratories are advised not to clean apparatus using benzene as a cleaning solvent

PCM: Phase Change Material.

PCS: Personal Communication Service.

PDA: personal digital assistant, or portable data assistant.

PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act): PDCA is the so-called "circle of continuous improvement", especially as the term is applied to the effecting of improvements to the operation of a manufacturing process. Step 1 (P) of the cycle begins with stating the specific objective of this particular cycle of the improvement process. Examples of objectives are to conduct a survey of customers needs or to develop control charts to study the stability of the process to be improved. Questions will be raised by the objective chosen - such questions should be discussed with others and answers to them predicted. Step 2 (D) begins by carrying out the Plan developed in Step 1, carefully documenting data and findings as progress is made. Step 3 (C) is to study and analyse the results obtained at Step 2. Current knowledge of the process may be confirmed by the data or may be changed and enhanced. If the results differ from what was predicted at Step 1 (P), what conclusions can be drawn - what can be learned? Step 4 (A) is to Act! Thus, based on the results of Step 3, decide whether to make a change to the product or process. And if a change is decided on, ensure is is first tried out with a pilot project and that the results are beneficial. The PDCA system of continual improvement was first named as such in 1939 in the book by Walter Shewhart and W. Edwards Deming Statistical Method from the Viewpoint of Quality Control, and the cycle is often referred to as the Shewhart Cycle (but also the Deming Cycle!). It is essentially similar to DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyse, Improve, Control), the strict procedure fundamental to Six Sigma methodology, perhaps confirming the view that the famous Six Sigma is simply a rigorous, practical way for putting into effect the old gurus' ideas.

PDQ: business jargon for "Pretty D-mn Quick!".

PDS: See Product Design Specification.

PDSA: Plan, Do, Study, Act - synonymous with PDCA, qv. Also, People's Dispensary for Sick Animals, a well-known UK charity.

PDT: portable data terminal.

PE: see Probable Error.

Pearl-Reed Curve: see S-Curve.

Pegged Requirement: in an overall materials plan, a material requirement that has been directly identified through the pegging process (qv) with the individual material plan that gave rise to it. Thus the word pegged simply means that a peg has been established (see pegging again). Note that a pegged allocation is a material kitted in readiness for use in a manufacturing job, and used up during the duration of the job.

Pegging: In connection with a materials planning system, the action of analysing the bill of materials either (1) to determine the earlier origin of present material requirements, by tracing down the bill to ancestor materials, or (2) to determine the ultimate use to which present material requirements will be put, by tracing up the bill to descendant materials. For example, in case (2), knowing the gross requirements for a lower level component, the planner may wish to peg up the bill of materials to determine the plans of the end products giving rise to these lower requirements. The planner may wish to peg up the bill from products where manufacturing capacity is short, all the way to the master scheduled products, to see if something can be done to reduce lot sizes and so relieve demand at the lower level. A single relationship between a higher level and a lower level is referred to as a "peg". In the 1970s and 1980s, it was typical for a so-called pegging file to be printed - a very voluminous piece of fan-folded computer stationery measured in feet thick. Nowadays, pegging is provided through on-line indexing on demand at the VDU. Finally, note the terms full pegging and one-stage pegging are encountered. As they suggest, the first means pegging all the way up the bill to finished goods and the second means pegging only to the next stage of manufacture.

Percentage Rejected Chart: See Attribute Control Chart.

Period Order Quantity (POQ Planning Rule): A planning rule whereby a plan quantity (ie an order quantity) is the sum of the product requirements over a specified future period of time. For supplies of raw materials, when raw material requirements change, use of the POQ rule has the merit of ensuring that the dates supplier deliveries are needed remain fixed even after changes are made in material requirements, although the actual quantities to be sent on the (unchanged) dates may be different from the original supply plans notified.

Performance Efficiency (of a Machine): usually defined as (net operating time - lost time) / net operating time. Performance efficiency is a measure of efficiency while the macine is running.

Perpetual Inventory Checking (PI checking): See Cycle Counting.

Personnel Management: An alternative term for Human Resources management, qv.

PERT: Program Evaluation and Review Technique. A technique for managing and evaluating progress in relation to a major project by Critical Path Analysis. The steps which constitute the project are drawn as a set of interlinked activities in chronological sequence (with "Start" at the extreme left and "Finish" at the extreme right). The durations of each activity are analysed to see when one activity finishes and the next one can begin. For example: Action 1 is followed by Action 2; Action 2 is followed by Actions 3 and 4 carried out in parallel; Action 4 is followed by Action 5 ...). The critical path is the unbroken sequence of activities with the overall longest duration. Activities not on the critical path will have "slack times", meaning that the earliest date they can start is some time before the latest date they must start (if the project is not to be late). Slack time durations can be readily calculated from the diagram (the slack time of activities on the critical path is zero, of course.) The output from PERT programs includes optional Gantt charts, and listings of activities completed and not yet started. The Microsoft application Project Manager is well spoken of as a PERT tool. A PERT analysis is also referred to as a bill of events.

PEST Analysis: analysis of the Political, Economic, Social and Technological factors affecting a company.

Pest Book: An informal writing book maintained by the stores or warehouse manager in which "visits" by pests, such as rats, cockroaches, house moths, biscuit beetles, wasps and starlings are recorded. A sketch of the pest will be useful for the company called in to deal with it and, perhaps, for Health and Safety Executive staff.

Petal: A circular transport route in which the individual destinations to be visited are spaced at relatively even intervals. Petal routes tend to be produced by route planning software. Contrast Stem-and-Cluster.

PFMECA: potential FMECA - see FMECA.

PGA: Pin Grid Array, or (US) Professional Golf Association.

PGP: Pretty Good Privacy.

Phantom Part: A term used in relation to assemble-to-order. Normally, in engineering production, a part that is manufactured is booked into stock for later issue in due course. In the Final Assembly Schedule (FAS), a part is made and then immediately further used in the on-going assembly process. That is, it has only a transitory life (perhaps a few minutes). Consequently, it may be invalid to estimate the leadtime of final assembly by adding up the normal individual leadtimes of the product variants being assembled. The term Phantom Part is often confused with Pseudo Part (qv).

Phlogiston: see Negative Stock (Entry No. 3)

PI Checking: Perpetual inventory checking - synonymous with Cycle Counting, qv.

Pick by Line: synonymous with batch picking (wave picking).

Pick Deck: see Issue Deck.

Pick Density: When items of stock are allocated to a storage area, it is commonsense to take into account in doing so the ease or difficulty of picking from the various locations. However, it is a mistake merely to allocate the fastest moving items to the easiest locations ("the golden zone"). What must be done is to optimise the use of the golden zone, and to do means taking account not only of each item's popularity but also of the space it occupies. A means of doing so is via the item's pick density, D, where D = P / V. P is the popularity of the item or the number of picks per month, and V is the "volume-movement", defined as T x C where T is the number of items picked per month and C is the cubic volume of one unit. Items with the highest pick densities should be allocated to the golden zone. See sub-sections 1.2.6 and 1.5 of the free on-line 'course' on stores/warehouse operations at this site.

Pick Face: The location in a stores or warehouse where actual (physical) picking takes place.

Pick List: see Issue List

Pick to Light: An alternative to voice directed picking. With light directed picking, a small light is illuminated at the places from which picking is to take place, speeding up the travelling process. The system is more expensive and less flexible than voice, qv..

Picking: Finding and removing stock from a storage area - generally found to be the most expensive activity in the operation of a stores or warehouse, due especially to the travelling time of the picker to reach the stock to be picked. See Wave Picking. Picking is a major concern in stores & warehouse operational management - see especially sub-section 4.2 of the free on-line 'course' on stores/warehouse operations at this site.

Picking (Broken Case): piece picking - ie the picking of individual items.

Picking (Piece): the picking of individual items. Piece picking operations are usually characterised by their being many items from which to pick (often tens of thousands) and few items required, per picking instruction. An obvious examples is the picking of repair parts by automotve spares distributors.

Picking (Voice Directed): see Voice Picking

Picking (Zonal): The division of a stock area into a number of geographic zones, each zone having allocated to it a distinct range of stock. (A second consideration in allocating items to a zone should be each zone's picking load.) The picking of an order proceeds from zone to zone, the chargehand for each zone picking and assembling the stock on the order that is stored in his zone. Also referred to as "Pick-and-Pass".

Picking List: A list of items, their quantities and their locations, usually generated by computer and used by the storeman or warehouseman to direct the picking of stock. The items will typically be for a works order or a customer order. The list will usually be sorted in order of the locations to be visited and will also specify each item's name and, perhaps, other information including special instructions.

Picking Performance: Picking performance is usually taken to mean the speed with which stock is picked in a stores or warehouse, typically measured in minutes per order line. Thus if 7 orders each of 10 lines are picked in 280 minutes, this is 280 / 70 mins per line = 4 mins / line. A common breakeven point used as a yardstick to assess good or bad performance is 5 mins / line. It might be observed, however, that superior picking performance measured in this way is an attainment affecting only the stores' or warehouse's internal productivity. The picking requirements of the facility's customers - say, production, distribution and sales - are for accuracy, timeliness and such allied matters as correctness of paperwork, addressing and safe packing.

Picro- : having a bitter taste or smell; also the names of derivatives of picric acid.

PICS: The first ever MRP system, developed by IBM from 1965, and introduced to a number of manufacturing companies at the time in Racine, Wisconsin.

Piece Part: Synonymous with Part (qv).

Pin Manufacturing: see Manufacture of Pins.

PIP: Partner Integration Process.

Pipelines and Pipeline Stock: see Baku-Ceyhan Pipeline and Langelad Pipeline. Also see Stock (Pipeline).

Plan-Do-Check-Action: See PDCA.

Planned Capacity: The capacity required to manufacture the materials which are planned to be made at a work centre.

Planned Order: A plan type in Closed-loop MRP, being any plan within the system generated by the planning logic, or arithmetical procedures, of the system itself. When MRP is re-run after the closed-loop transactions are fed back into the system, all existing planned orders are deleted and a new set is generated. However, the newly generated planned orders may be identical to the previous set in timing and quantity, so that it will appear to the system user as if the old plans have simply been somewhat revised. The use always of planned orders in closed-loop MRP ensures that plans are always in synchronisation and that the planner does not need to concern himself with rescheduling messages - contrast the use of Firm Planned Orders.

Planning Bill of Materials: Just as a "physical" bill of materials (see Bill of Materials) is a representation of the structure and relationships among products and components as they exist in reality, a planning bill of materials is a representation purely to assist in materials planning. Examples of material representations that exist only for planning purposes are: pseudo items; the super bill; and the modular bill of materials.

Planning Board: In the past, a planning board was typically a white board on which were inscribed (down the left hand side) work centres, and across which was drawn a Gantt chart showing the identities of jobs scheduled to be manufactured over time (time being on the horizontal axis). The VDU output from a discrete event APS system emulates a planning board, but with obviously far more powerful features such as the capability for interaction. Discrete job APS systems were at one time referred to as electronic planning boards.

Plastic Pallets: Plastic pallets serve the same function as wooden pallets. An advantage of them, however, especially those of the 'closed top' (or 'closed deck') design, is that they are capable of easy, thorough cleaning and disinfection. For that reason, their use may be insisted on by food manufacturers. Before choosing plastic pallets, an assessment should be made of the damage likely to be incurred to them due to stress in loading and unloading operations. For example, pallets made of hollow plastic may rupture, leading to the ingress of water and dirt. Consideration should also be given the effect on plastic of conditions of storage: temperatures below -20C may lead to cracking and fractures, with the implications this has for safety. Although plastic pallets are more expensive than wooden ones, a financial assessment must take account of all factors, including cleaning, theft, weight, damage, insurance etc.. For a vendor of good quality plastic pallets, visit Craemer Ltd..

Plumley Brick: The geographical area of the UK has been divided by one Plumley into a large number of small, square sub-areas not dissimilar to post code sub-areas, each one categorised for sales and marketing purposes according to such characteristics as retail spending power, industrial use etc.. This division (ie into Plumley Bricks) allows the sales company to target areas for advertising and promotion purposes.

Pneumatic: see tyres.

POD Rule (Period Order Despatch rule): A DRP system is likely to create despatch lot quantities not synchronised with transport schedules, and then to compound the problem caused by frequent rescheduling. In order to mitigate the disadvantage of the system, despatch lots may be calculated equal to total required material requirements over a period of time, each despatch to take place on a specified date. When, inevitably, requirements change, even though the quantity to be despatched may be different from the original quantity, use of the POD rule ensures the date of despatch stays the same. See also POQ Rule.

POF: Plastic Optical Fibre.

Point-Factor: A quantitative job evaluation methodology. When a rate of pay is to be established for a company job, the employment of a "point-factor"system for evaluating it is particularly appropriate. (Market pricing is all very well, but even though a job within the company may have the same job title as an external job, individual jobs within industry, and the corresponding demands they make on job holders, even with the same job title, vary considerably from one company to the next.) A point-factor job evaluation system is a thorough means of analysing a job from first principles, and identifying the various factors which constitute it and which must be dealt with in its performance. After analysis, the various factors and the degrees to which they apply in the actual conduct of the job by a job holder are "weighted" numerically. Note that the weights to be applied are decided by discussion, and their magnitude will be determined in part at least by how management views the difficulties and importance of the challenges facing the company. Factors might include: problem solving ability; willingness to assume responsibility; and ability to plan and coordinate. The points, or weights, assigned to factors will be graded according to the need for the factor in actually carrying out the job (semi-routine problem; generally defined problem; abstractly defined ... etc). The Hay System is a very well-known point-factor job evaluation procedure - see the Hay Guide Chart.

Point Solution: The use of a stand-alone Finite Scheduler for manufacturing scheduling, rather than a more comprehensive APS system (qv).

Point to point: (1) A private dedicated leased telecommunications network for the transfer of messages between participating company sites. Point-to-point networks have the advantages of security and, for large volumes of traffic, low costs of usage, but they have the disadvantages of high start-up costs, high fixed overheads and exclusivity. (2) In England, a rural amateur horse racing meeting, the successor to the popular steeplechasing of the 18th century (which was so called because the routes of races were between parish steeples.)

Poiseuilles Law: A law of physics relating to viscosity and liquid flowing through a pipe. The law relates the rate of volume of flow to the radius of the pipe (dv/dt = vpr**2).

Poisson Distribution: A statistical distribution developed by Simeon Poisson. The Poisson law is also known as the law of small numbers, and may be derived from the binomial theorem.

Poka Yoke: (Japanese = fool-proof) A formal definition of poka yoke is the engineering of a machine, process or activity so as to make it incapable of supplying a defective product or service. Thus poka yoke is in practice a procedure and small canon of design rules (originally formulated by Shigeo Shingo) to make equipment mistake-proof in operation - ie to make it difficult, if not impossible, for the operator of a machine to make a mistake in such matters as machine control. Poka yoke is hardly new, however. Mistake proofing was applied by Henry Ford in 1908 in the manufacture of the Model T. Everyday consumer examples of mistake proofing are the need to remove ones bank card from an ATM before the device will dispense cash, and the fitting of height bars on amusement rides. Pronounced poker-yokay.

POLCA: Paired-cell Overlapping Loops of Cards with Automation, a detailed variation of Quick Response manufacturing.

Policy Stock: see Stock (Policy).

POM: Production Operations Management.

POOGI: Process Of Ongoing Improvement (see kaizen).

POQ: See Period Order Quantity.

POS: Point Of Sale - see EPOS.

Post deduction Relief: See Backflushing.

Postponement Centre: A node within a supply and distribution network where material in transit through the supply chain may be held for a very short time so as to allow last minute, planned product refinements to take place. Examples of refinements are the afixing, just prior to customer delivery, of customer-specific labels to boxes and cans, and the inserting, just prior to export, of required foreign language manuals into boxes containing consumer devices. See also consolidation centre and crossdocking.

Posture: see pay posture.

POTS: Plain Old Telephone Service.

POU Stock: Point of Use Stock (qv).

PPE: Personal Protective Eqipment, used in industry when a hazard cannot be sufficiently guarded against by other health & safety measures.

PPM: Parts per million, usually found in the context of a quality rating (ie 35 ppm = 35 non-conforming items per million produced). Nowadays, the term often preferred is DPMO (qv), defects per million opportunities, and the performance of a system is likely to be expressed as "so-many sigma" - say, 6 sigma (qv).

PPPP: The four P's of change management - Purpose (reason for change); Picture (vision of how the new state of affairs will look); Plan (key elements of the change process); and People (what roles are to be played by employees).

PPPP + S: See Marketing Mix.

Precision: see Accuracy (also see uncertainty).

Predictive Maintenance: A component of TPM. The principal means of obtaining warnings of possible impending machine failures is through SPC. However, the long-term collection of breakdown data and their analysis via maintenance software systems, as they relate to the numbers and types of adjustments made, the machine parts replaced, and so forth, are also valuable.

Preference Share: a share issued on the foundation of a company, bearing a fixed dividend. See shares.

Press-on Band: see tyres.

Preventive Maintenance: a central and intuitive component of TPM, and concerned with the determination of what is to be serviced and inspected, and the periodicity of doing so.

Price Elasticity/Inelasticity: see elasticity.

Price Variance: See Variance (Price).

Primary Product: metal, crops, oil etc ... synonymous with commodity (qv).

Prime Cost: see Cost (Prime).

Priority Rule (Priority of a Job): see despatching rule, static rule and dynamic rule.

Private Equity: private equity is a form of company lending: if a company needs money (say, to build a new factory), and is unable or unwilling to approach a bank, it might turn instead for the money to a private equity firm in the City of London. For the private equity firm, private equity represents any type of equity investment in an asset in which the equity (ie ownership/value) itself cannot be freely traded in the public market (ie on the stock exchange). Since private equity funds are not quoted on the stock exchange, they are sold perhaps through trade sales or by direct sale to another private equity fund. The managers of private equity funds typically take control themselves of the companies in which they invest. Private equity should be contrasted with the equity in a company represented by ordinary shares. See also venture capital.

Privity (legal): In a contract between two or more parties, the parties concerned are said to be privy to it (for example, the supplying company and the buying company). An outside party not privy to the contract cannot take action in law with regard to it, even though the outside party may be directly affected by the outcome of the contract. For example, our own company's customer cannot take legal action against our own supplier.

PRN (Package Recovery Note): See Packaging Waste.

Pro Forma: A general Latin phrase used to mean that something has been done or produced by way of example. It can mean the production of a "model", or standard, document or form - for example, a model export document to be completed in a standard way by all customers. Thus we have the term Pro Forma Invoice, an invoice (ie a bill requiring payment) sent in advance of goods to be supplied later, or sent with goods which are only on approval.

Probabilistic Model: In creating a simulation, mathematical or other model of a set of procedures, such as one of a production scheduling situation, various parameters must be defined. Examples are rates of production; job leadtimes; and quantities of output. The model is said to be probabilistic if allowance is made in its operation for things not going exactly as specified. For example, the production leadtime may be input as 2:00 hours, but the model when it is run may assume the actual time may be anywhere between 1:40 hours and 2:20 hours, according to some probability distribution also specified in the model. See also Deterministic Model.

Probability Density Function (Continuous): When the occurrence of an event can have a very large number of numerical outcomes, the values are said to be continuous. Examples of an event and continuous values are the determination of a forecast error and possible error values of (say) 5.01, 5.23, 5.32 ... The formula needed to express the continuous values is referred to as a function. In the case of forecasting, because of the existence of the formula, it is possible to find the probability of an error (say) greater than 9.52. The range of probabilities represented by the function, or formula, is termed its density. In order to make use of the formula to find a range of probabilities, or densities, it must be "integrated" using the calculus over the range concerned. In the case of forecast errors, this requires the integration of the very complicated formula for the normal, or Gaussian, distribution of errors. See Probability Density Function (Discrete).

Probability Density Function (Discrete): When the occurrence of an event can have only a limited number of outcomes, each capable of representation by a numeric value, the values are said to be discrete. Examples of an event and such outcomes are the throwing of two six-sided dice and the possible scores of 2, 3, 4 ... 11, 12. If the values are expressed as a formula or in a reference table, either the formula or the table is said to be a function ... hence the term "discrete probability function". Because of the existence of the function, it is possible to find the probability of any outcome of the event occurring, or the probability of any range of outcomes occurring. For example, it is possible to find the probability of a score from the two dice being greater than 10, or being less than 5. The outcome or range of outcomes represented by the function is its density. In the case of the dice, the probability of the score being over 10 is 3 / 36 (ie two possible throws of 11 and one throw of twelve out of 36 possible outcomes (6 x 6)). If a table was used to represent the various probabilities, it is defined as a probability density function. The sum of the probabilities of obtaining an 11 or 12 is the origin of the term "density" in this example. See also probability density function (continuous).

Probable Error (PE): This expression relates especially to the application of statistics and the properties of the normal distribution to measurement, metrology and uncertainty. It is defined as that distance for which there is a 50% probability of a measurement between the true value and +/- PE. In metrology, in stating the value of a measurement, one would also state the uncertainty of this measurement. Usually, this would be quoted as 1 standard deviation (ie the true value +/- 68% of the uncertainty). Some people however prefer to quote the 0.67 standard deviations (ie the true value +/- 50% of the uncertainty).

Process Capability: The capability of a process to manufacture a part with given upper and lower specification limits. Process capability measures capability over a period of time (eg a month) so as to take into account capability with different operators and with different external envirionments, such as temperature and pressure. Contrast machine capabilty. See also Capability Index.

Process Control Cycle Counting: See Brooks-Wilson Cycle Counting.

Process Costing: See Costing (Process).

Process Cycle Efficiency: A metric, or measure, used in Just-in-Time / Lean manufacture to gauge the extent to which the manufacturer has removed waste and wasteful practice from the manufacturing cycle. Process cycle efficiency is defined as (Time spent adding value over the production cycle) / (Total lead time of the production cycle) x 100%. It has been asserted that that a process cannot be said to be lean unless the process cycle efficiency is > 25%.

Process Map: a flow chart.

Process Organised Company: The management of large scale process industries (manufacturers of chemicals, semi-conductors and so on) is usually organised round responsibilities for one or more of the industrial processes which contribute to the final product. These areas of responsibility are cost centres, not profit centres, and staff are technology oriented rather than market oriented. The process organised company is heavily dependent on central staff for coordination, communication, marketing and maintenance of strategic direction (see hosin). Contrast the product organised company.

Producer's Risk: The risk inherent in a sampling plan that a lot of parts that it was intended should be accepted will, in fact, be rejected by the customer. (See also Consumer's Risk.)

Product Availability: In engineering design and the allied study of the propensity of a product to fail, "product availability" is a useful quantitative measure through which this vital machine characteristic can be expressed. It is defined as (mean time to failure)/ ((mean time to failure) + (mean time to repair)).

Product Brief: Preparation of the product brief is the very first stage in the long and expensive process of designing, developing and introducing a new product to the company's selling range. The product brief says what is to be developed, the market at which it is aimed and the product's desired key features. A number of company departments will contribute to the brief, especially marketing department, but it is the voice of the customer that must be heard louder than them all. See also "Quality, Function, Deployment" (QFD).

Product Design Specification (PDS): This document is a comprehensive and unambiguous statement of the features and characteristics that a new product under development is to have. The PDS definitely does not encompass the matter of design solutions. Aspects covered include target performance; working environment; expected life in service; cost; maintainability; size; weight; appearance ... Since the Product Design Specification will be studied by personnel from many parts of the company, it must be written in non-technical language.

Product Life Cycle: See Life Cycle.

Product Oriented Manufacture: A factory or plant which is specifically built to accommodate the manufacture of either a single product or a very small number of similar products. Two examples are: (1) an oil refinery, built to process crude oil; and (2) a whisky distillery built to blend and then bottle a scotch whisky such as "Johnnie Walker". Product oriented manufacture is characterised by being large scale and having a high cost of construction. See also Group Oriented Manufacture and Functionally Oriented Manufacture.

Product Organised Company: A company in which individual management groups are assigned responsibility for specific products or group of products. The product focussed group is usually a profit centre, and acts, in effect, as a "focussed factory". For example, it must react quickly to shifts in market preferences and demand. The role of central staff in a product organised company is removed from day to day decisions, and is generally confined to such services as IT and HR. By contrast, see process organised company.

Production Cost: See Cost (Production) . Also see 'production cost centre' in the free GMCS course on purchasing.

Production Forecast: (1) A term used in costing to mean the output which is forecast to be required of a cost centre over a year. The production forecast is calculated by exploding the annual sales forecast through the bill of materials. It is most unlikely, of course, that actual production will be the same as the production forecast - see Volume Variance. (2) A term used in two-level master scheduling to denote the expected remaining customer demand for a particular option variant. In manufacture suitable to two-level master scheduling, option variants each relating to particular Option Types can be specified by customers, and combined to make the final product. In order to plan the production of the alternative option variants, estimations are made through the super bill of the popularity of the variants. However, the actual customer orders as they turn out are likely to reveal a different mix of variants from plan. Keeping track of actual orders for specified variants is clearly straightforward from the orders received, but what must also be done is to keep track of probable future orders for the various variants. Thus as actual orders are received, the forecast for any remaining specification for a particular variant is referred to as its production forecast.

Production Overhead: That part of a product cost attributed to indirect costs, as opposed to the part directly attributed to manufacture.

Productivity: the degree to which a company or factory is effective and efficient in manufacturing items for sale. It is widely agreed that high productivity is "good" and that low productivity will lead to industrial decline. (And at the national level, if a country's industry is in decline, the country itself might be said to be in decline.) A major problem with productivity is expressing it quantitatively. If a measure for it could be agreed, the elements which go to make it up might then be examined, and action identified that would result in the decline being halted and productivity increased. One measure that has been mooted is value added. This has its drawbacks, however, as explained under the corresponding Glossary entry. Another rather naive measure is "total sales per employee" (a problem with this measure is that it may persuade staff to outsource everything!). A common measure is single factor productivity, sfp. The sfp for Product X is defined as "Output of Product X / Input of resources in producing X", all in £. However, for the whole company and its complete range of products, it is necessary to speak of total factor productivity, tfp. The tfp of a company can be calculated from averaging the individual sfp measures, but weighting each individual sfp in the total in accordance with its individual output in £. (For example, if the sfp of X is 1.6, and the sfp of Y is 1.2, the tfp would not be (1.6 + 1.2) / 2 ... ie 1.4. The 1.6 and 1.2 elements in the calculation would be weighted in accordance with the importance of X and Y in the total overall.) It is observed that a particularly effective way to improve company productivity as defined by total factor productivity is through the adoption of lean manufacturing methods - not only are resources reduced, but the clearing away of stock reveals other opportunities for improvement. Also see Benchmarking and value added.

Profit/Quantity Graph: A breakeven chart centred round Cost/Quantity/Price Analysis (qv) illustrating the point in sales when profit equals zero.

Profit (Gross): Turnover less the cost of sales. Gross profit is often expressed as a percentage of turnover - for example, if gross profit = £50,000 and turnover = £200,000, gross profit is 25%.

Profit (Net): Operating profit less other expenses.

Profit (Operating): Gross profit less distribution and administration expenses.

Profit and Loss Account: A major financial document required by law to be completed and filed at Companies House, Cardiff, as part of a company's annual returns. The document shows the following information for the year to which it refers: turnover; gross profit; various categories of expense; tax payable; and dividends distributed.

Profit Centre: An area of operating activity where the manager has responsibility for costs and revenues.

Progress Chaser: An expeditor (qv).

Projected Available Balance: The stock of a product that it is forecast will be free for use on successive future dates (usually consecutive future days or weeks). The calculation of the amount is made as follows: (Free stock on the previous date) plus (receipts into stock on the future date in question) minus (the forecast requirements for stock on the future date).

Projected Gross Requirements: The future gross requirements for a component or raw material, duly calculated as part of the netting logic of materials planning.

Promo: Slick talk for a promotion (qv).

Promotion: A major merchandising or selling initiative such as heavy TV advertising, nationwide direct mailing and so on, taken by a company and its advertising agency typically to bring to the attention of consumers a specific product (perhaps the launch of a new car, etc.).

Prophilograph Machine: A device employing laser beams used for determining the flatness of a floor. See Floor (Flatness of).

Pseudo Bill: synonymous with the super bill of materials.

Pseudo Part: In assemble-to-order and the modular bill of materials, it is convenient to refer to customer options collectively as "parts" - an example is a car "sports pack". In fact, while the "part" may make sense from the customer's point of view, the individual parts needed to provide the option bear no physical relationship to each other, even in combination. For example, the sports pack may comprise body stripes, a leather covered steering wheel, a rear spoiler and fluffy dice.

PTFE: Polytetrafluoroethylene.

PTH: Plated Through the Hole.

PTN: Post Tender Negotiation - see Tender.

Pull Manufacture: Manufacture the rate of which is strictly and directly geared to the immediate requirements of the next stage of production, such requirements being directly communicated by the next stage. The expression is usually used in the context of Just-in-Time - ie manufacture is synchronised to market demand and controlled by the kanban system of visual control.

Purchase Order: The purchase order is a formal company document which conveys the instructions or detail of a required supply. The legal role of the purchase order in forming the contract of supply will vary with circumstances: most usually, it will be an offer, such that the supplier's acceptance of it at the price mentioned seals the contract, but it might alternatively be the acceptance of an offer (say, an order placed immediately against the supplier's tender.) The document itself may also be used by the company simply to convey detail, perhaps being a call-off for material against a yearly contract already in existence. The purchase order might convey a summary of substantial material to be delivered at various times in the future by special order forms under the P.O.'s 'umbrella'. Finally, a particularly important role of the purchase order is to superimpose onto the contract certain express contractual conditions required by the purchaser, such as conditions of payment (see The Battle of the Forms). These conditions are typically printed on the reverse of the document itself. Also see sub-section 3.1.2 of the free on-line purchasing 'course' at this site.

Purchasing: a major, critical speciality within manufacturing industry. For a complete analysis of purchasing, see the 'course notes' relating to the free on-line course on the subject at this site.

Purchasing Time Horizon: In formulating the master schedule, a sufficiently distant period ahead must be specified to enable raw materials to be acquired in time. However, the leadtime of supply of a raw material will be different depending whether it is a repeat order (a "warm start") or whether it is a new order requiring, say, prior price negotiation and the establishment of various procedures (a "cold start"). Note that in addition, the purchasing manager may wish to see approximate raw material requirements over a very long period for purposes of supplier negotiation and strategic planning.

Push Manufacture: A faintly humorous term intended to contrast scheduled manufacture with pull manufacture (qv). That is, in making up a schedule, the quantities and timing of requirements are calculated according to an overall plan, and success means sticking to the plan regardless of actual current requirements at the various stages. In addition, in push manufacture, any excess stock resulting from lot sizing is naturally moved on to the next stage of use regardless of the fact that there is no immediate requirement for it there.

Put Away Rules: Rules relating to the placement of stock in a stores or warehouse after its arrival there from goods-in or from the shop floor. The rules are especially critical where the storage facility is a variable location one (qv), so that decisions are made within the software. (A computer program used for this purpose is referred to as a "put away algorithm".) Two simple rules are: goods with the highest pick densities (qv) in easily picked locations ("the golden zone"); and put goods as near as possible to existing goods of the same type.

PUWER: The Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998. These regulations require employers to ensure equipment provided for use in materials handling is (a) suitable for its intended purpose; (b) has been assessed for risks associated with its use; (c) has been subject to recorded inspection; and (d) is maintained in good working order.

PVD: Physical Vapour Definition - a method of applying a superior brass-like, high shine protective surface to metals such as polished stainless steel. PVD is expensive and employs vacuum treatment and annealing,

PWA: Printed Wiring Assembly.

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