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GO TO Wa, Wb, We, Wh, Wi, Wo, last entry
3 way match: a company's internal validation of a supplier's invoice, a physical receipt and the company's purchase order. (If all details match, payment can be authorised.)
5W2H: "What, Why, Where, When, Who" + "How, How Much" ... A checklist for proceeding with an investigation, especially one assessing whether a process adds value or contributes to customer satisfaction. For example: (1) What - what is being done, and could it be eliminated as an activity?; (2) Why - why is the task necessary, and can we clarify its purpose?; (3) Where ...
W3: www (ie the world wide web). Also W3C, world wide web consortium.
WACC: weighted average cost of capital.
Wages: money paid by the company to an employee in accordance with his contract of service - see pay.
Wagner-Whitin Algorithm: When a succession of manufacturing lots is arrived at to satisfy future material needs, what must be done next is to schedule their actual manufacture (ie decide the timing). The Wagner-Whitin algorithm can be employed to do so, to minimise the total of the stockholding costs incurred and the set-up/order costs of the actual plans themselves. The technique is based on dynamic programming (a variation of mathematical programming). See Part Period Balancing. Also see The Dynamic Version of the Economic Lot Size, by H.M.Wagner and T.M.Whitin, Management Science magazine (US), October 1958.
Waiting Line: See Queue (2)
WAN: Wide Area Network (also see LAN).
WAP: Wireless Application Protocol, the technical rules and procedures which allow mobile phones or hand-held computers to access the Internet.
Warehouse (see also Stores): Usually a building furnished with racking for holding finished goods stock to enable customers' orders to be picked, packed and despatched. See also Bonded Warehouse.
Warehouse Identification: for marking and labelling systems, see Beaverswood Warehouse Identification. Also see Vocabulary.
Warehouse Management System: see WMS.
Warranty: (1) In legal parlance, an express or implied term in a contract which is not central to the contract's main purpose. For example, in a contract to supply a machine tool, the supplier may undertake to provide 10 copies of the machine operating manual. The undertaking with regards the 10 copies is likely to constitute a warranty. Note that a warranty may be express (written down) or implied (not written down, but presumed to be part of the contract by custom and practice). See also Condition (legal). (2) In the consumer market, a warranty is a statement guaranteeing the performance of what has been sold, and offering - up to a specified time limit - to make good any deficiency thereof.
WASP: (1) A schedule of procedures for dealing with job applicants at interviews .... thus: W = welcome; A = acquiring (knowledge); S = supplying (information); and P = parting. See Rodgers Seven Point Plan and Fraser's Five Point Plan. (2) White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, a term occasionally used in the US, not always respectfully, to denote citizens having a racial and religious affinity with the Nation's founding fathers.
Waste: A goal of lean manufacture and Just-in-Time is said to be the accomplishment of manufacture in which waste and wasteful practices have been eliminated. A prime example of waste put forward by exponents of lean and JIT is famously "inventory". Examples of wasteful inventory include WIP created due to the manufacture of production lots in excess of net requirements; and the production of non-conforming items. Wasteful activities are said to be those adding "no value" to the customer's enjoyment of the product, and include waiting time incurred by operators; the inefficient movement and transport of materials, perhaps due to poor plant layout; and process and machining activities originating in poor process and product design. See the useful "waste mnemonic" Tim Wood! See the allied topic of plant housekeeping under SSSSS.
WastePak: A collective waste compliance scheme associated with Packaging Waste (qv).
Wave Picking: Also known as batch order picking, wave picking is the simultaneous picking of multiple customer orders, done to improve the efficiency of the overall picking operation ( for example, by reducing travelling time). As might be supposed, there are numerous schemes for carrying out wave picking. For example, a batch of picking requirements constituting all the orders for a morning a can be "exploded" into different picking lists for each storeroom or zone, and each zone's pick list then sorted into stock location sequence. Each of these lists might then be split into "sub-lists", each sub-list estimated to require approximately the same product picking time. The storemen or warehousemen must deliver the picked items from his sub-list to a designated order sorting area.
Waybill: A document recording the destination, route and sender of a load, and, where applicable, the consignee. Waybills are often used for tracking the progress of a load (or tracing its whereabouts if it becomes lost).
WCDMA: Wideband Code Division Multiple Access.
WCM: World Class Manufacturing, a term used particularly by Richard Schonberger for Just-in-Time (qv).
WDA; WDV: (1) Writing Down Allowance; (2) Written Down Value - (1) the permitted amount a fixed asset is to be allowed to depreciate in the company's book of accounts. (2) the cost of an asset less its accumulated depreciation - ie the asset's current "book value".
Wealth of Nations (The): see Manufacture of Pins (!).
WebPLAN: A supply chain simulator (qv) for exploding bills of material very quickly.
Wedge: (aka decoder) a hardware device that allows a user to connect a bar code scanner or other device (such as a weighing machine) to a computer terminal. To do so, a keyboard wedge interface is usually employed, allowing any data scanned to be output as ASCII characters directly onto a computer screen.
WEEE (Waste in Electrical and Electronic Equipment directive): This immensely disruptive and onerous legislation was expected to become law in August 2005, but has been deferred (again) to sometime in 2007. Its purpose is to force manufacturers and retailers to "take back" and recycle products at the "end of life". Products include all household appliances, IT and consumer equipment, certain toys, sports equiment and medical devices, and include not only the basic products themselves but all peripheral apparatus including electrical cabling. As well as "take back", obligated companies must provide suitable networks whereby products can be returned by consumers for recycling, at no direct cost to themselves (ie the consumers), although it expected that actual collection will be through civic recycling centres. It is estimated that the cost of transporting WEEE from civic community or consolidation sites to the recycling points will constitute 60% of the total disposal cost (casting doubt on the value of the whole scheme). As a measure of the problem which WEEE claims to solve, 200 million electrical items per year are committed to landfill sites. The regulations cover historical waste - ie items put on the market before the legislation - as well as future waste. A company's liability for historical waste is based on its current market share, regardless of the fact that market share is likely to have changed, perhaps considerably, since the original products reached their end of life. As a consequence, companies' liability in this regard is unknown and unknowable. Liability for future waste will be calculated based on tonnage sold, and requires that records be kept and that all products sold should be marked and later identifiable. To achieve compliance, it is expected that most companies will join a compliance scheme. One example is REPIC, a not-for-profit scheme set up by Dyson, Electrolux, Hitachi and others, A second scheme is ERP (European Recycling Platform), an alliance of Braun, HP, Sony and others. In addition, companies engaged in WEEE schemes have developed integrated recycling plants capable of adaptation to any type of product requiring recycling. WEEE officials encourage end of life disposal to be taken into account at the product design stage. Needless to say, this outrageous legislation has its origin in the hated European Union; the EU gauleiter in charge is one Roberto Ferrigno, director of its Environmental Bureau. For assistance on WEEE, see Midex Reverse Technologies, who are offering a scheme in conjunction with Christian Salvesen. Also visit Wincanton (Wincanton operate a £4.5m WEEE recycling plant in Billingham, Co. Durham, capable of processing 75,000 tonnes per year). See also flytipping. Also, especially, see Returns and Reverse Logistics.
Weigh Counting: this method of counting items dispensed from a stores or warehouse is used when items are small or light. It is normally done on purpose-made weigh counting scales. (The first thing to note is that a scale should be selected that has a sensitivity appropriate to the weight of the items being counted - ie if the items are light, the scales should be more sensitive). The procedure follows three steps: (1) First, the "tare", or base weight, of the container in which the parts are held should be determined most carefully by separate weighing - say, weight T, which is entered into the memory of the weighing scale; (2) Next, a sample of the items to be counted should be taken and counted out most carefully, and the total weight, including the container, determined. Say there were 12 items in the sample, and the total weight was was W. This data is again entered into the memory of the scale, which is then able to calculate the unit weight of one item. In our example, this is (W - T)/12, or X. Finally, (3) we weigh all the items which are to be counted. Say, the weight is B, including the container. The number counted is given directly by the counting scale, and here is (B - T)/X. Note that ideally in order to be sure of the accuracy of the unit weight, 4 or 5 weighings should be taken and averaged. This is because the differences in weight between the units being weighed is random and the statistical distribution of these differences is Normal. The most important factor is to obtain an accurate reading of the tare weight of the container. Substantial errors can arise if the same unit weight X is applied in weighings involving apparently identical, but different, containers, each container therefore having a different tare weight. Note that a variation of this method of weigh counting is reverse sampling.
Weights & Marks: Like controlled convergence, the weights & marks procedure is a means of evaluating and deciding between several contending options, where a true evaluation cannot be made on strictly quantitative terms. Examples of the use of weights & marks might be in deciding on a software package (from several alternatives), choosing a supplier (from among several vendors) or choosing an engineering design from several alternative contenders. Weights & marks proceeds in three stages. First, all the desirable attributes, or characteristics, that the finally chosen selection should possess are written down in a list, and each one is weighted as to its degree of importance or desirability (10 = vitally important, 1= inconsequential). The weighting process cannot be scientific, but it is informed. Secondly, each contending choice is considered in turn in relation to each weighted attribute and the contender duly marked as to how well it is judged it fulfils the attribute required. Finally, for each alternative contender, each attribute mark is multiplied by its corresponding weight to give a partial score; all partial scores are then added to give an overall score. What is useful about weight & marks is the controlled procedure itself and the requirement of those participating in it to "make a statement" by assigning numerical values to the weights and the marks. The final scores themselves are not especially valuable, and it is not unknown for the person charged with presenting the final selection destroy them. Members of the selection team must beware of pre-empting their final choice because of excessive enthusiasm for one contender.
White Goods: Such consumer items as fridges, freezers, washing machines and other relatively large domestic items. Contrast "brown goods".
White Noise: In sales demand and forecasting, the presence in the demand data of random order placements not in accordance with the general pattern or level of demand. Contrast black noise, a humorous term meaning data processing and data file mistakes in demand data.
White Sound: so-called 'broadband sound', that is said to be easier on the ear, and dissipate faster. White sound is a feature of certain alarm systems, such as the reversing alarm from Brigade Electronics.
Whitehall: a wide thoroughfare in London running south from Trafalgar Square for 600 yards to the Houses of Parliament, and along which are located the offices of almost all of the great departments of state within the UK, including The Treasury, The Ministry of Defence and The Foreign Office. The term "Whitehall" is used in UK jargon as a convenient collective noun to mean any British government ministry, or to mean official regulatory requirements generally.
Window Scheduling: Synonymous with operation compression (qv) in leadtime management.
Winter's Linear and Exponential Smoothing: Devised by P. R. Winter, a combination of the use of seasonal factors and exponential smoothing (one of the two techniques used in parallel within IBM's MAAPICS DB forecasting system - the other being Bayesian.)
WIP (Work in Progress) (US - Work in Process): WIP is material on the shop floor or on the plant, in the process of transformation and therefore currently being worked on. An important distinction must be made in considering WIP between the financial view and the view of inventory control. The financial view is that material at every stage of its progress, at which value is added, from after the point of raw material, up to but not including the point of finished goods, constitutes WIP. As such a value must be ascribed to it. This would include, say, a component which required four operations according to its bill of materials, and which at a moment in time had had only two of those operations performed on it so far. The inventory view of WIP is that it is material in transition, and is definable (if at all) not by its stage of manufacture but by its location and the degree to which it has been committed to the manufacturing process. That is, WIP is not based on the physical state of the material. Instead, it is based on the Bill of Materials and the transactional state of materials. For example, suppose one picks material M and issues it to a production order. Material M is now WIP. However, suppose instead one delivers material M to the work centre but does not issue it to production. Material M remains as stock and is not WIP. In summary, in inventory control, stock is transformed by the manufacturing process into WIP and so ceases to be "stock". It becomes stock again only when each manufacturing step, or operation, is complete and reported. (That is, in a multi-operation manufacturing route, material will become successively stock and WIP several times as each step is completed and reported.) Note that for planners employing a conventional manufacturing planning system, material which constitutes WIP will always have started as "stock" and will always end as "stock". For them, this is an important principle to remember - thus physically, it is possible to purchase a component and move it directly into WIP. This is not possible, however, if, say, MRP is being used. Under MRP, a formal planning record must first be created for it ... ie planning insists that as far as the system is concerned, it must first be formally received, or set up and recorded, as stock and only then issued to WIP. Under lean manufacturing, however, all material is held as on-hand stock until final manufacture is achieved. When this occurs and is reported, the on-hand final stock balance is increased and the inventory balances of the stock records of the component materials are decreased by backflushing. For three further explanations of WIP, you are referred to (1) Inventory Record Accuracy, by Roger Brooks & Larry Wilson (pp 36 - 48 and pp 143 - 145)*; (2) Inventory Accuracy, by David Piasecki (pp 299 - 301)*, and, importantly, all separate sub-sections of section 4.3 of the free on-line Stock Record Accuracy 'course' at this site. * These two books are obtainable from the APICS book service and from Amazon (either US or UK).
WKPI: Warehouse Key Performance Indicator. Seven WKPIs are: productivity; despatch accuracy; stock records accuracy; dock-to-stock time; order cycle time; storage density; and degree of automation.
WLL: Wireless Local Loop.
WMS: Warehouse Management System - a comprehensive computer-based system which controls the movement and storage of stock within a warehouse and directs the warehouse's day to day operations. The functions of a proprietory WMS vary very considerably from package to package, but would be expected to include: (1) a variable location facility for the control of locations and for directing stock put-aways and picking (including wave picking); (2) an order processing system; (3) lot tracking; (4) support for cross docking; (5) a system for material replenishment; (6) a comprehensive range of transactions relating to the carrying out of warehouse tasks; and (7) easy integration with standard data collection devices including RDTs and RFIDs. The WMS should above all also be capable of easy adaptation to the particula needs of the user (eg by including parameter driven programs). Choice of a WMS by a user should be in the hands of warehouse staff, not external consultants - one method of making such a choice is through the "weights and marks" method.
WO: Work Order, qv.
Wooden Packaging: see ISPM15.
Work Centre (WC): a specific production facility, consisting of one or several men and one or several machines. Work centres may be organised within the factory by type (eg drilling machines) - functional organisation, or by families of parts made - group organisation.
Work Centre, alternate: a work centre that can be used in case of an overload or breakdown at the primary work centre.
Work Centre, critical: there are many definitions of this term. They include: (1) a WC working close to its maximum capacity; (2) a bottleneck WC; (3) a WC processing the work of an important part of the factory, where a breakdown would be especially serious; and (4) a WC comprising a unique machine for which no alternative is available.
Work Centre Efficiency: for a given work centre, the ratio of standard hours to actual hours used, based on historical usage. Efficiencies are scrutinised by the shop supervisor as indicating which WC capacities should be adjusted.
Work Centre, Gateway: a gateway work centre is one through which work arrives on the shop floor for the first time (ie the work is not already on the shop floor and so is not arriving from another work centre - ie it is not arriving from an intermediate work centre). The significance of a gateway WC is that the release of the work must be controlled to prevent queues and hence excessive leadtimes - see importantly input/output control.
Work in Process (US usage): see WIP
Work in Progress (UK usage): - see WIP
Work Study: see Taylorism.
Working Stock - see Stock (Working).
Works Order: A manufacturing plan directed to be made on the factory floor by the authority of factory management, to help fulfil the master production schedule. In some circumstances, in a make-to-order environment, a works order may be individually raised to fulfil a specific customer order (note, however, that "works order" is not otherwise synonymous with "customer order"). In other circumstances, a works order may be to make a manufacturing lot for stock in accordance with the materials plan.
World Class Manufacturing (WCM): a term used particularly by Richard Schonberger for Just-in-Time (qv).
WORM: Write Once, Read Many. Spoken of in the context of the GEN2 protocol, used nowadays in conjunction with RFID tags. WORM software allows users first to encode the tags (= write once), which then become "locked", and after which can be read any number of times.
Written Down Value: See WDV.
WWW: World Wide Web, the Internet.
WYSIWYG: pronounced wizzy-wig - "What You See Is What You Get", a computer development application which displays to the user the precise visual form of the output that will be produced when the development is complete.
