Supply Chain Glossary Archives - aimINSIGHT Solutions, Inc.

Supply Chain and Operations Management Glossary (Z)

Zero sum game: A situation in which the total amount of profit ( or “pie”) is fixed. Individual players by their actions can only affect how the profit is allocated (or pie is cut). Also called a constant sum game. In contrast, see Prisoner’s dilemma. Zone skipping: A shipping method by which the shipper uses a public delivery service such as UPS or USPS to deliver its product the last few kilometers to the final customer, but the shipper uses its own trucks to ship its product for the initial long distance, skipping zones as perhaps defined by the public carrier’s rate…

Supply Chain and Operations Management Glossary (Y)

Posted by AJ Amjad Khanmohamed — December 27, 2017 in Supply Chain and Operations Management Glossary (Y)

Yield management: term used in the airline industry for revenue management.

Supply Chain and Operations Management Glossary (X)

Posted by AJ Amjad Khanmohamed — December 27, 2017 in Supply Chain and Operations Management Glossary (X)

X12: A standard for electronic communication of business forms. For example, form 810 is an invoice, and 856 is a shipping notice. See also: DISA. XML (eXtensible Markup Language): An “open”, ISO standard data language, similar to, but more powerful than HTML. It is not only for storing and transmitting data, but also describing what the data mean. It is becoming a popular format for business-to-business transactions on the Web. Two features of it are that, like HTML, it uses tags, and an XML file is tree structured, as illustrated by the following example: <line item> <sku> b40104 </sku> <quantity> 2 </quantity>…

Supply Chain and Operations Management Glossary (W)

Posted by AJ Amjad Khanmohamed — December 27, 2017 in Supply Chain and Operations Management Glossary (W)

Wardrop’s Principle: A traffic equilibrium rule. Suppose commuters wish to travel from A to B. According to Wardrop’s principle, at a user equilibrium where users choose the paths, among all paths along which there is a positive A-to-B traffic, the travel time from A to B will be the same, whereas the travel time from A-to-B is at least as great along paths not carrying any A-to-B traffic. See also: Nash Equilibrium and Braess’s paradox. Warehouse: A DC in which product may be carried for an extended period of time, such as product that either has seasonal production or seasonal demand. Some…

Supply Chain and Operations Management Glossary (V)

Posted by AJ Amjad Khanmohamed — December 26, 2017 in Supply Chain and Operations Management Glossary (V)

Value based pricing: charging each customer an amount close to the customer’s value for the product. This presumes that resale among customers does not occur and that one can determine each customer’s value for the product. One form originally used by Brown Shoe Company, then IBM, and then Xerox, was metering. Brown and IBM charged by hours used. Xerox charged by copies made. See revenue management, discriminatory pricing, and promotion. Value Engineering: a cost reduction philosophy based on carefully identifying the true purpose of any component in a system and then finding the cheapest yet acceptable way of fulfilling that purpose. VAN…

Supply Chain and Operations Management Glossary (U)

Posted by AJ Amjad Khanmohamed — December 26, 2017 in Supply Chain and Operations Management Glossary (U)

UCC (Uniform Commercial Code): a standard set of laws governing commercial transactions (bills of lading, letters of credit, bank deposits, collections, etc.) adopted by all states in the U.S. except Louisiana (it uses a variant of the Napoleonic code). UCC (Uniform Code Council): An industry group to promote multi-industry standards for product identification or bar codes. See http://www.uc-council.org ULD (Unit Load Device): A cargo carrying container of standard size, usually in the airfreight industry. These can be carried by most large aircraft, but not by smaller aircraft such as the B737 or the MD80. Ullage: Unfilled space at the top of a storage tank,…

Supply Chain and Operations Management Glossary (T)

Posted by AJ Amjad Khanmohamed — December 26, 2017 in Supply Chain and Operations Management Glossary (T)

T1 line (Trunk level 1): A data transmission capacity of 1,544,000 bits per second. This is a standard measure of telephone line capacity in North America. Historically, enough to carry 24 voice channels. Higher levels are: T2: 96 voice channels. T3: 672 voice channels. T4: 4032 voice channels. Tank car: Rail car for carrying fluids. In contrast, see box, flat, and hopper car. Tare weight: weight of empty vehicle, perhaps with driver, used for computing weight of delivered product. TEU (Twenty foot Equivalent Unit): A unit of measure for maritime freight containers. The majority of maritime containers are either 20 feet or 40…

Supply Chain and Operations Management Glossary (S)

Posted by AJ Amjad Khanmohamed — December 26, 2017 in Supply Chain and Operations Management Glossary (S)

Safety stock: Inventory carried to protect against running out during a lead time due to the uncertainty in either: the length of the lead time, the amount delivered, amount demanded, or time of occurrence of demand during a lead time. Same store sales: sales this year in stores that were open last year. Say’s Law: In simplest form, this is the “build it and they will come” philosophy—the belief that supply creates demand (e.g., if we produce a product, people will realize that they would like to buy it). If we build a sports stadium, sports teams and spectators will come. Attributed to…

Supply Chain and Operations Management Glossary (R)

Posted by AJ Amjad Khanmohamed — December 26, 2017 in Supply Chain and Operations Management Glossary (R)

R2 (R squared): A measure, between 0 and 1, of how well a forecast or regression line fits a set of data. An R2 of 1 means a perfect fit. Numerically, it is 1 – (sum of squared errors about the forecast line)/(sum of squared errors about the mean). Rain-check: A form of backlog in which the seller, in the event of a stock-out, gives a ticket to a customer wishing to purchase the product, guaranteeing that the seller will order more of the product and sell it to the customer at the original price. Ramsey prices: A form of cost allocation that…

Supply Chain and Operations Management Glossary (Q)

Posted by AJ Amjad Khanmohamed — December 26, 2017 in Supply Chain and Operations Management Glossary (Q)

QFD (Quality Function Deployment): A table oriented procedure for converting customer requirements for a product into the features or functions that should be included in the product design. Quantity discount: Pricing policy by which the cost per unit purchased decreases with the quantity purchased. Two main types of discount are: a) “all units”, in which case the lower price applies to all units purchased if the quantity purchased exceeds the threshold, and: b) “incremental units”, in which case the lower price applies only to units purchased in excess of the threshold. Another variation that is useful if a variety of products are…

Tag: Supply Chain Glossary