The words an enquiry is written in.
Sourcing conversations go wrong when two people use the same word for different scopes. These are the definitions we work to — short, specific, and linked to the page where the practice behind them is described.
- Contract manufacturingCM, EMS when the content is purely electronic
- Manufacturing a product to a customer’s released design, under the customer’s brand. The design, the specification and the market stay with the customer; the manufacturer owns the process, the supply chain and the evidence that each unit was built and tested correctly. Read more →
- Build to print
- Manufacturing exactly what a released drawing and bill of materials describe, with no design freedom. Changes need a formal deviation or an engineering change from the owner of the drawing, which is what separates build to print from design-and-build. Read more →
- Box buildsystems integration
- The complete, boxed unit rather than a subassembly: enclosure, mechanics, wiring, electronics, labelling, firmware, test and packaging, delivered ready to sell or install. The scope is defined by what is inside the box, not by how many operations it took. Read more →
- Product transferNPI when the product is new
- Moving the manufacture of an existing product from one plant to another without changing the product. It runs through gates — documentation review, sourcing, tooling and test, first article and pilot batch, then series — each with a written exit criterion. Read more →
- Control panelswitchgear assembly, Schaltschrank
- The enclosure that holds the protection, control and drive equipment of a machine or plant, wired and tested as an assembly. In Europe the relevant product standard for low-voltage assemblies is IEC 61439; the machine’s own electrical equipment is covered by IEC 60204-1. Read more →
- IEC 61439
- The standard for low-voltage switchgear and controlgear assemblies. It splits responsibility between the original manufacturer, who verifies the design, and the assembly manufacturer, who builds to it and performs the routine verification on every assembly produced. Read more →
- UL 508A
- The North American standard for industrial control panels. A panel built to it carries a short-circuit current rating and is wired, protected and marked to rules that differ from European practice, which is why a panel for both markets is designed for both from the start. Read more →
- Routine testroutine verification, Stückprüfung
- The test every single unit receives before it ships, as opposed to a type test performed once on a design. For a panel it covers wiring and function, protective bonding continuity and dielectric properties; the measured values belong in the unit’s own record. Read more →
- Cable harnessloom, wiring harness
- A set of wires, terminals and connectors assembled to a defined geometry so that it fits one machine and one route through it. Harness quality is decided by crimp control and documentation, not by the wire. Read more →
- EPLAN
- The electrical CAE system most European machine builders document in. Used properly it is the single source of truth: the schematic, the device list, the terminal and cable plans and the panel layout come from one project, so a change cannot appear in one document and not another. Read more →
- First article inspectionFAI
- A full dimensional and functional check of the first unit produced with production tooling and the production process, reported characteristic by characteristic against the drawing. Series production starts after the customer approves that report, not before. Read more →
- Golden sample
- An approved physical reference unit, kept to settle later disagreements about what “correct” looks like. It freezes appearance and workmanship judgements that a drawing cannot express, and it is only useful if what it freezes is written down beside it. Read more →
- Pilot batch
- A small production run made under series conditions — same fixtures, same operators, same test station — to prove the process rather than the product. Its purpose is to expose what only appears at quantity: feeding, handling, takt and the yield of the test. Read more →
- FAT and SATfactory and site acceptance test
- The acceptance test at the builder’s works, and the one repeated at the customer’s site after installation. A FAT proves the machine against its specification with agreed parts; a SAT proves it in its real surroundings, with the utilities and the material it will actually run on. Read more →
- NREnon-recurring engineering
- The one-off engineering and setup cost of starting a programme: process design, fixtures, test development, documentation and qualification. Quoted as its own line so that it is not hidden in the piece price and amortised invisibly over a volume that may not happen. Read more →
- MOQ and batch size
- The minimum order quantity a price is valid for, and the quantity actually produced in one run. They are different numbers: batch size is driven by setup time and component packaging, MOQ by what makes a price honest. Read more →
- Material liability
- The agreed exposure a manufacturer carries for material bought against a customer forecast. It states which horizon is firm, which is committed material, and who pays for stock and long-lead components if the forecast changes. Read more →
- Directed buy
- A component the customer nominates and whose price and source they control, purchased by the manufacturer. The manufacturer owns delivery and inspection of it but not its commercial terms, which is why responsibility for shortage and for quality has to be written down separately. Read more →
- Last-time buyLTB
- The final purchase of a component before its manufacturer stops making it, sized to cover remaining production and spares demand. Its quantity is a forecast question, not a purchasing one, and getting it wrong is expensive in both directions. Read more →
- Obsolescence management
- Watching the lifecycle status of the components inside a running product so that an end-of-life notice arrives as a plan rather than as a surprise. It is a calendar activity, run on a bill of materials, long before a part actually disappears. Read more →
- Retrofit
- Replacing the control, drive or safety equipment of an existing machine while keeping its mechanics. It buys years of service life for a fraction of a new machine, and its real difficulty is doing it inside the shutdown window the plant can afford. Read more →
- Takt time and cycle time
- Takt is what demand asks for: available time divided by parts needed. Cycle time is what a station or a line actually takes. A line runs at the cycle time of its slowest station plus its transfer, which is rarely the number in the specification. Read more →
- OEEoverall equipment effectiveness
- Availability multiplied by performance multiplied by quality, as a single ratio of what a machine produced to what it could have produced. Useful as a trend on one machine; misleading when compared between plants that count their losses differently. Read more →
- Serial traceability
- Linking a unit’s serial number to its component lots, work order, stations, operators, firmware version and measured test values. The test is whether both directions work: from a suspect lot to the units that contain it, and from a returned unit back to everything in it. Read more →
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