Glossary of Terms

ABC classification

Stratification strategy for dividing inventory into categories of importance. It is used in planning and other materials function decisions.

APICS (American Production and Inventory Control Society)

Professional society for materials and operations professionals worldwide.

Assemble to order (ATO)

Inventory strategy where inventory is kept one level down from the final customer ready and assembled as customer order is received.

Available to promise (ATP)

Calculation in which the dates are determined for available planned inventory in the master production schedule.

Backflush

Transaction automatically triggered by another transaction. Usually found in inventory balance transactions. Also sometimes called autodeduct.

Balance by location

An inventory balance for only one location of a material or item.

Barometric measurements

Measures that apply to all manufacturing businesses. These measurements are normally ongoing for monitoring purposes. See Diagnostic measurements.

Bill of material (BOM)

Documented description of components and ingredients, including quantity per and item/material numbers.

Bill of resource

Record within an enterprise resource planning business system that includes both routing and bill of material information.

Business imperatives

Top priority goals or objectives that are to be accomplished in the next 12 months. Normally a short list of the most important objectives to support the strategic plan.

Business plan

Top management plan with strategic objectives, financial objectives, and business imperatives.

Business system

A computer system used to communicate linkages between processes such as scheduling and execution of schedules, inventory consumption and balance records, forecasting and planning inventory, financials and operations, etc. Usually referred to...