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R & D: Research & Development.
Race, The: A follow up book to The Goal, qv.
Racking (Cantilever): Warehouse or stores racking in which the shelving on which the goods rest is supported at the rear of the rack. Since there are no front supports, the shelving is suitable for long objects such as pipes and planks.
Racking (High Bay): Racks which are, say, 70' to 200' high. Automatic stacker cranes are used to store and retrieve material, usually along narrow aisles. Narrow aisle high bay racking is costly to install and maintain, but provides high density of storage and good security.
Racking (Mobile): Racks which can be moved, allowing very dense storage when closed up, and access to stock when the racking is moved. Perhaps used for very long-term low use storage, such as military field spares.
Racking Safety: Racking safety is a vital on-going topic for the stores or warehouse manager. There are a number of courses in the UK on the subjecty - see SEMA and also the Storage Equipment Safety Service website. Note that a cost effective means of solving a need for racking is by hiring it - see the Nene Group site.
Racking System: A honeycomb of pallet spaces, perhaps one space deep and (say) 35' high.
Radio Bar Codes: loose talk for Radio Frequency Identification codes (see RFID). The term is often used by Tesco,
Radio Data Terminal: see RDT.
Radio Frequency Identification: see RFID.
Rainmaker: slang for a talented, go-getting employee.
RAMP: Rapid Acquisition of Manufactured Parts, a procedure associated with EDI for notifying to a supplier that parts are to be despatched immediately.
Random Location Storage - see Variable Location Storage.
Range: Usually, the difference between the smallest and largest measurement in a sample. The range is used in Statistical Process Control (SPC) and is plotted on a variable control chart.
Rank and Yank: see Differentiation.
Ranking (of Jobs): A qualitative job evaluation technique whereby the jobs to be ranked in order, from those that are to have the highest rates of pay to those to be awarded the lowest, are simply ranked against each other in order (1st, 2nd, 3rd ... ). Clearly, in order to carry out the ranking, job criteria must be decided.
Raw Material: the products constituting the starting step in manufacture, and from which all subsequent manufactured items stem. Raw materials are obtained by buyers as part of the purchasing process, and occupy Level 99 in the levelled bill of materials - see Low Level Coding.
RBD: Reliability Block Diagram, in design quality, a failure avoidance methodology.
RCA: Radio Corporation of America.
RCCP: See Rough Cut Capacity Planning.
RDT: Radio Data Terminal - a small device, often hand-held, used in process monitoring and stores/warehouse control by which data may be transmitted to a computer, or received therefrom, by means of a radio link rather than by means of a co-axial cable. An RDT may weigh 15 oz, and have, say, a 128 character VDU display, a limited key pad, a 12 hour rechargeable battery, a bar code wand and a range (to the computer) of 5 miles.
Real property: land and buildings.
Receipt (of Goods): When goods are delivered from the physical possession of a supplier or haulier to the physical possession of a customer, they are said to have been received by the customer. There is no legal significance in such receipt of goods beyond the duty of the recipient in common law to take reasonable care of them (ie not to damage them or store them in unpropitious circumstances). Contrast Acceptance and Title.
Recipe: A term used in the process industries to mean the immediate components (ie ingredients) of a manufactured product, including the usages of each of them. Not surprisingly, there are a number of terms relating to the bill of materials which differ as between engineering and process industries - for example: yield v. scrap; usage v. quantity per; recoveries; by products; etc..
Recoveries (in Materials Planning): A product may take part in a manufacturing process, but may then be either wholly or partly recovered at the end of it. Examples are solvents (perhaps 97% recovered) and catalysts (100% recovered).
Recruitment: In human resource management, the act of identifying groups of personnel, either elsewhere in the company or, more usually, in the external labour market, and presenting them with the opportunity to apply for vacant jobs within the company. Recruitment requires knowledge of advertising effectiveness and costs, and, after due consultation with local management, the need to prepare advertising "copy" (the wording in advertisements). Recruitment is undertaken exclusively by HR staff, in contrast to "selection".
Recursion: Recursion occurs when a computer program calls itself - that is, there is an instruction in Program X which states "Call Program X". Recursive programming is widely used in analysis of the bill of materials - for example, the programming action to be taken at one level of the bill is precisely the same as the action needed to be taken at the next level down, and so on all the way down to the raw materials. Not all programming languages support the technique of recursion - for example, Pascal, C and PL/1 do, COBOL, FORTRAN and BASIC do not.
Red Bead (game/demonstation): a play acting game much loved by W.Edwards Deming at his famous quality seminars. A plastic household box is filled with small, white beads and a participant in the game ("a willing worker") is provided with a plastic paddle containing fifty indentations, to be used for scooping up the beads. The willing worker's task is to "make", or obtain, 50 beads from one scoop. All 50 beads must be white - ie of good quality. However, before the game begins, a number of red beads are introduced into the box of white beads. As a consequence, the worker finds that his white beads are contaminated with red ones. The number of contaminating red beads varies each time a paddle of beads is scooped up. The response of the ignorant worker is to try and try again to obtain uncontaminated white beads, but each time his scoop is contaminated with a certain number of red ones. In playing out the charade at his seminar, Deming awards merit pay rises to workers who manufacture white beads with fewer red beads than others. Workers become competitive, and targets are set. The variation in the number of red beads, of course, is determined purely by chance, and the correct response to the goal of all white beads is to develop a means of ensuring red beads never enter the box in the first place. The emphasis in the workplace should be cooperation, teamwork and continuous improvement, not competition and performance targets. (* There are usually six "willing workers" and three "inspectors" in the game.)
Redundant Stock: see Stock (Redundant).
Reed-Solomon erasure and error correction: A specification employed with 2-D bar codes which allows part of the bar code to be destroyed while still preserving the original information.
Re-engineering (of a company): A concept developed by Michael Hammer and James Champee in the 1990s predicated on the ideas that the company (1) should widen the span of control of its managers, and (2) should seek to reduce the extent of its bureaucracy (for example, by reducing the number of tiers of its hierarchical structure). In short, re-engineering the company, according to its advocates, is to make it leaner and flatter.
Regenerative MRP: After the input of transactions in the closed-loop MRP system, perhaps at the end of each day, a regenerative MRP system will automatically recalculate the entire materials plan. Planned orders will be rescheduled, and open and firm orders may generate rescheduling instructions. Contrast Net Change.
Regio im Oberland ('Regio'): a type of schwundgeld originating in January 2005 in Wolfsratshausen, southern Germany.
Release: The action of authorising a works order to proceed to the shop floor to commence manufacture. In closed-loop MRP, the release of either a planned order or a firm planned order will change the order's status to that of "open" (ie to that of a scheduled receipt). Other activities will also be initiated, such as the generation of shop paperwork such as an ID card and the issue of component kitting instructions.
Reliability: The tendency of a product to continue to work and perform satisfactorily despite chance events and changes in its operating environment. The achievement of reliabilty in the product is a prime objective in product design, and is investigated formally through FMECA (qv). See also Failure Rate, Failure Mode and Product Availability.
Remnant Stock: see Stock (Remnant).
Re-Order Point: See Order Point.
Repairable Item: A tool, fixture or other item used in manufacture, and which is repaired or refurbished prior to its reuse. Repairable items have associated with them repair leadtimes.
Replenish to Demand: See Make to Order.
Reporting Logic: The messages output by closed-loop MRP advising the planner as to the need to reschedule open and firm planned orders, in order to restore the equilibrium of demand and supply within the materials plan.
Representation (legal): A statement made by one party regarding some aspect of a bargain or sale, although the matter that is represented is not itself directly incorporated in the contractual terms - see Misrepresentation.
Res Ipsa Loquitur (legal): (Latin: the thing speaks for itself) An assertion in court in, perhaps, a case involving personal injury, that it is self evident that the only possible explanation for an employee's injury was the defendant's negligence. An example might be an employee injured by a tool shattering in use, the defendant being the tool manufacturer.
Rescission (legal): Rescission means the rescinding of a contract - ie the repudiation and abrogation of a contract. Such action is often taken by one party following the discovery that the other party has misrepresented the facts, and to do so, the rescinding party must communicate the fact to the other party. If possible, the rescinding party should be returned to the same financial position it had before the 'bad' contract was agreed. If that is not possible, the court may rule that the contract cannot be rescinded and must, in fact, continue. Rescissory (adj.) = having the effect of rescinding.
Resilient: see tyres.
Resource Requirements Planning: The initial stage in the formulation of a master production schedule is termed "sales and operations planning" (qv). Since there is no direct check of the viability of the sales and operations plan at the point it is created, in terms of capacity or other resources such as manpower, an after-the-event estimation is made of the plan's do-ability through resource requirements planning. Like rough cut capacity planning, RRP is not a specific technique - it is merely the action taken by a particular company to test the validity of its proposed Sales and Operations Plan. It is called what it is because the personnel involved in sales and operations planning are senior managers who are therefore able to acquire new "resources", such as additional machinery, money and labour.
Response: The reaction of a system to a stimulus. The reaction is manifest in the form of a response variable, defined as an observed, quantifiable outcome of an experiment or test. Such an outcome is usually a quality characteristic or other performance measure of a process or system. A response plot or response diagram is a simple graphical plot illustrating the relationship between a response (denoted on the vertical axis) and a factor A (set between various limits as enumerated on the horizontal axis). The value of a response plot is in showing, on the same plot, how response varies with factor A (1) in the presence of a second factor B, and (2) in the absence of the second factor B. See Design of Experiments.
Restrictive Trade Practices Act (1956): An Act of Parliament making price fixing agreements illegal.
Retail: The practice and sale of goods through shops and markets frequented by everyday consumers.
Retail Audit: the conduct of market research in the retail market. Researchers typically take inventories of the shelves and stock rooms of shops and supermarkets (with permission - and usually paying a small premium to do so). Well known market research companies conducting retail audits are A.C.Nielson and Dun & Bradstreet.
Retention Clause: A provision in a contract, typically involving large scale construction or the purchase of a major piece of equipment made to order, which permits the buyer to hold back part of the payment until the project is deemed to have been satisfactorily completed or the equipment is deemed to be operating as it should. The amount retained is typically 5% or 10% of the price, and the retention duration perhaps 6 months. See Stage Payments.
Retrofitting: the fitting of a part to a sub-assembly after the logical sequence in which the part should have been fitted, usually because of the part's unavailability at the correct time.
Returns Management: To varying degrees of generosity, retailers and others have long operated "open returns policies", whereby dissatisfied, or sometimes dishonest, customers may return goods for refund or exchange. Reasons for returns may be that goods are faulty, or that they do not comply with the customer's home environment (colour, size ...) or that the expense of the purchase is later seen to have been unwisely incurred. The problem is large and ever more complex as out-of-town stores increasingly diversify into areas each outside its core competence. The management of returns follows four steps: 1. collection, often using the same network employed for the original distribution of the goods (*); 2. assessment of damage - missing pieces, torn packaging etc; 3. categorisation, a team activity calling for a high degree of consistency and experience; 4. re-distribution, back to the original suppliers, or to stock, or for discount sale, or for scrap. Note that consumers who wish to check their rights in these matters should visit http:www.consumerdirect.gov.uk and follow the links to "making a complaint". (*Warehouse managers are aware that returns represent a considerable theft risk that must be countered by ensuring that they are attended to quickly and always in accordance with procedure.) Note that from 1/10/2005, new "General Product Safety Regulations" came into force in the UK covering the safety of products used by consumers, including second hand products. (Visit http://www.dti.gov.uk/ccp/topics1/safety.htm ... this web sites gives access to current recall notices issued by a variety of companies ... follow the site link entitled "product safety notices/recalls") The principal two burdens placed on industry under these regulations are as follows: (1) Safety Notices - government authorities themselves can issue various safety notices, suspension notices, withdrawal notices etc, forcing the recall of products from the market, and (2) Producer and Distributor Notification Obligations - there is a requirement to notify the authorities when it is found that products do not comply with general safety requirements and to state what actions have been taken to protect consumers from harm. Such notification must be immediate and, in emergencies, by the fastest possible means. As a final point, in a warehouse management system, it is important that any transaction dealing with a return does not automatically add it to the positive stock balance. While it may be necessary to issue a customer a financial credit, the returned stock is not immediately available - as stated above, it will need to be assessed and dealt with first. One solution may be to invent a "logical" location entitled awaiting assessment and credit the stock to that location. See also Reverse Logistics and WEEE.
Reverse Logistics: (1) After manufacture, especially specialist made-to-order manufacture, it may be necessary to return tools and jigs on loan from the customer to his place of work. It may also be necessary to return unused free issue components. The arrangement to return such items has been half humorously termed reverse logistics. (2) The term is also used with a humour that is quite unintentional to mean the "logistics" associated with certain environmental and marketing requirements. These are to make provision for the return of stock to its source after its initial distribution. There are six reasons why reverse logistics in these two categories might be necessary: (i) the need to recall products that are found after sale to be inherently faulty and dangerous; (ii) the perceived need to reprocess the basic material from which the product is made (for example, as in the disastrous Packaging Waste regulations and the WEEE regulations, both spawned by the bureaucrats of the European Union); (iii) to reuse the product (eg in the reuse of bottles and containers); (iv) to replace or repair items having defective quality; (v) to permit the return of excess stock, especially from retailers; and (vi) to allow the return of discontinued product lines. (3) The term has also been (wrongly) applied to Returns Management and the return of goods by consumers for their own reasons.
Reverse Sampling: In dispensing items from a store by weigh counting, suppose a storeman needs to pick 500 units of an item which he calculates will have a weight of w1. Suppose that a case of 1200 of these items is available and has a weight of w2, including the tare weight. To pick 500 units from the case, units are picked from it until its weight falls from w2 to (w2 - w1).
Reward Management: The control and administration of the systems and procedures devised by the company for determining the pay of all those who work for it. Reward management is a major topic within the manufacturing company and within human resources generally. Essential requirements of the systems and procedures developed are as follows: (1) they must cover all jobs, from the least paid to the highest paid, spanning a diversity of skills and learning; (2) they must be internally consistent and lead to the assignment of consistent rates of pay; (3) they must not be excessively difficult to develop and administer; (4) they must lead to rates of pay which appear to employees to be "fair", and which are comparable with the rates prevailing in the external jobs market. See especially pay structure.
RFDC: Radio Frequency Data Communications.
RFID: Radio Frequency Identification. The attachment to a product of a transponder bearing the product's code and other data, to enable the product's identity to be recorded on an electronic scanner positioned some way from it. RFID tags and labels are being increasingly used for the identification of stocked items in industry the way that bar codes are used in retail. They were originally developed for use with live animals, and have the advantage that they can be afixed to objects of irregular size or shape. Equally importantly, they can be read without the establishment of a line of sight. RFID tags are categorised as active or passive. Active tags contain their own power source (ie a battery) to help boost power and range, while passive tags rely entirely on the electric field created by by the tag interrogator (ie reader). RFID tags are capable of holding far more data than a 1D bar code, and the data so held is capable in some cases of being updated. The cost of tags and their technical range and performance are currently matters of intense research and development. See also ePC, Gen 2, ALE, AEN and (particularly) Smart Label. Glossary readers interested in following up this subject are reminded that the DTI holds 1-day courses on the subject in Bracknell, Berkshire - visit the DTI's RFID website at http://www.rfidc.com
RFQ: Request For a Quotation - an approach by a buyer to a supplier for information as to price and conditions for a specified good or service. Also RFI = request for information.
RFP: Request for Proposal - a proposal may be solicited from, say, a contractor or capital goods supplier, the proposal then forming the basis of a subsequent contract. Pitfalls in preparing an RFP are: (1) making it too simplistic, omitting the detail that would enable the vendor to prepare an accurate reply; (2) basing the RFP on wildly inadequate forecasts of future needs; and (3) omitting consideration of set-up issues.
RIBA: Royal Institute of British Architects.
RIDDOR: The Reporting of Injuries, Diseases, and Dangerous Occurences Regulations 1995; these regulations require employers to notify the Health & Safety Executive of fatal and major workplace accidents and those causing more than 3 days incapacity, of work related diseases and of any dangerous occurrence (whether there was an injury or not.
Rights Issue: a company may wish to raise money other than at its foundation in order to expand its business. It may do so by issuing new shares, offering them in the first instance to existing shareholders, usually at a preferential rate. See shares.
RISC: Reduced Instruction Set Computer.
RISE: A problem solving methodology comprising four steps. R = Recognition (what is the problem?); I = investigation (find the root cause of the problem); S = Solution (fix the root cause - permanently!); E = Evaluation (what has been learned that can be transferred elsewhere?)
RIU: Regulatory Impact Unit (formerly the Better Regulation Unit) ... a government organisation connected with the HSC/HSE (who else?) with a name to make you weep.
RMS: root mean square, the root mean square of a group of numbers being identical to their standard deviation.
Robot: A machine controlled through a computer program, inputs to the program usually emanating from sensory devices attached to the robot itself (video, audio and tactile). The robot typically comprises devices and attachments capable of performing the functions particular to its own design - say, gripping; picking and placing; moving; and so forth. There are some 350 different types of robot employed in industry, varying in cost from £100 to £100,000.
Robotics: The technology of applying robots in the performance of tasks previously undertaken directly by human beings. The usual aim of robotics application in manufacturing industry is to eliminate manual tasks which are dangerous, monotonous or especially arduous.
ROC: Return On Capital, usually defined for an individual company as (net profit)/(value of assets), where assets are the sum of fixed assets and current assets. Thus with a profit of £1m and net assets of £10m, the ROC as a percentage is 10%.
Rockefeller (John D.): see Standard Oil
Rodger's Seven Point Plan: A procedure put forward in 1970 by Alec Rodger for assessing a job candidate at an interview. See also Fraser's Five Point Plan.
RoHS: Restriction of the Use of Certain Hazardous Substances in Electrical and Electronic Equipment. Hurrah! - another EU directive from Europe and the Health & Safety Commission which becomes law in July 2006, to make us all a little safer and to make Britain a little less competitive. The RoHS regulations ban the sale in the EU of new electrical and electronic equipment containing more than decreed levels of such potentially harmful substances as lead, cadmium and mercury. The onus on British industry clearly falls on designers and manufacturers of such equipment rather than users. See also WEEE.
ROIC: Return On Invested Capital.
Roland: a type of schwundgeld launched in October 2001 in Bremen, Germany.
RONA: Return On Net Assets.
Root Mean Square: the RMS of a group of numbers is identical to their standard deviation.
ROP: Re-Order Point - see Order Point.
Rotational Tool: A tool or or device that can be repeatedly restored to its original condition after use in a production job. The elapsed time for restoration must be taken into account in scheduling, and, as far as equipment maintenance is concerned, the fact must be accepted that the tool does in fact gradually deteriorate.
Rough Cut Capacity Planning: The schedule itself which constitutes the Master Production Schedule is generated by an arithmetical procedure which takes no account direct or otherwise of the resources and capacity either to make the planned material or to make the components needed to support final manufacture. Consequently, before the final release of the Master Schedule as a company plan/commitment, some after-the-event check must be made to ensure that there is sufficient capacity and that it is capable of being made. Any such checking is termed rough cut capacity checking. Note that rough cut capacity checking is not a specific technique, although software vendors may claim that their own versions are standard methods. RCCP is anything the company or software house devises in order to do the job of investigating and ensuring that the Master Schedule is feasible from the capacity viewpoint. There are, legitimately, wide differences from company to company in the thoroughness of their rough cut methods. See also Resouce Requirements Planning.
Route: A sequence of operations - and the locations where they are to be performed - which is followed in the course of manufacture of a specific shop floor job. A route will be given an identification number and will specify the work centre / machine / operation of each step along the way, and also the identity of any special tools needed. Routes are recorded on the Routings File (qv).
Route Planning: Route planning as it is meant here is not the finding of a particular map route from A to B, as might be required by an everyday motorist. Here, it is the application of a computer algorithm for planning the routes of a number of vehicles to many destinations in such a way as to minimise the total distance travelled or to minimise the total travelling time. Note that route planning software optimises the totality of all the routes planned, taken together, not the individual routes of the individual vehicles. The algorithm relies on the Savings Criterion principle (qv).
Router: in communications technology, a device which connects a computer to the Internet and which permits such things as the sharing of broadband connection with other computers throughout a building.
Routing, Blanket: a routing that lists a group of operations etc which are needed to produce a family of manufactured parts. The parts may have small differences in size, times and tool requirements, but each uses the same sequence of operations. See Routings File.
Routing, Composite: a routing that lists a group of operations etc needed to produce a family of manufactured parts, but all of which operations are not used for all of the parts. (The operations used by a specific part will depend on its particular characteristics.) See Routings File.
Routing, Rework: a routing that shows further work needed to be done over and above the normal operational steps in order to correct a quality fault. Usually, a rework route is raised on an ad hoc basis as circumstances arise. However, where there is a permanently high reject rate in manufacturing, the rework route may be made permanent. See Routings File.
Routings File: A file, each record of which holds the details relating to a particular route (qv). The accuracy of the routings file was not a critical matter under MRP; with an APS, however, the routings file must be 100% accurate, since an APS specifies the details of the hour to hour work to be performed. Obtaining and maintaining 100% accuracy can be a problem: it is usually best if the file is made the responsibility of a named manager, perhaps someone skilled in work study.
ROV: return on value (= return on capital).
RP: Repairable Period - the elapsed period from the point in time when an item of equipment breaks down to the point when it is returned and reinstalled after repair.
RPN: Risk Priority Number, a term encountered in FMECA. The RPN is obtained by multiplying the Risk Severity score (1 - 10), by the Probability of Occurrence score (1 - 10), by the Risk Detectability score (1 - 10). Problems which are more serious incur a higher RPN. The sum of all RPNs gives the total risk figure for the process or service under consideration/design.
RRM: Rapid Response Manufacturing.
RRP: See Resource Requirements Planning.
RTD: Research and Technical Development.
RTLS: Real Time Locator System. A system in which the location of an object is revealed by the attachment to it of an RFID tag.
RTRT: Repair Turn Round Time - see Turn Round Time.
RTY: Rolled Throughput Yield, a measure used in Six Sigma. See also DPMO.
Ruhr: A major coal, iron and steel area of Germany.
Rumsfeld, Donald H. : Donald Henry Rumsfeld (1932 - ) is a senior US politician and figure, educated at Princeton University and 13th US Secretary of Defense. Among the many "Rumsfeldisms" is included Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns - the ones we don't know we don't know. See http://www.whitehouse.gov/government/rumsfeld-bio.html
Run Time: The duration of a manufacturing job's leadtime is comprised of a number of distinct activities. One such activity is actual, literal manufacture on the machine - ie running the job. Thus run time is the time needed for actual, physical manufacture, from start to finish.
Runners: Shop floor jargon for products made on a frequent basis.
Rush Order: A job usually accepted to be done in far less than the normal leadtime, often as a favour to a valuable customer. The job is assigned constant high priority and is given maximum attention by the supervisor.
