Glossary 1

Industrial engineering.- the branch of engineering that is concerned with the efficient
production of industrial goods as affected by elements such as plant and procedural
design, the management of materials and energy , and the integration of workers within
the overall system

Activity Based Costing.-it is a costing and analysis method that associates resources and
their costs to activities and then associates the costs of activities to cost objects (e.g. a
product) based on a cost driver which measure use of an activity by the cost object. The
cost drivers, such as the number of persons performing a work or the number of setups
required per product reflect the consumption of activities by the products.

Activity Based Management.-a discipline that focuses on the management of activities as

a route to improving the value received by the costumer and the profit received by
providing this value. The discipline includes cost driver analysis, activity analysis, and
performance measurement.

Assembly.- a number of parts or subassemblies or any combination thereof joined

together to perform a specific function and capable of disassembly.

Balanced Scorecard.-a comprehensive performance measurement technique that

considers four areas of performance in a balanced way:

1) customer perspective - how customers see us,

2) internal perspective-what we must excel at,
3) innovation & learning - how we continue to improve and create value,
4) Financial perspective-how we meet shareholder needs.

Benchmarking.- an improvement process in which a company measures the performance

of its products or processes against that of best-in-class products or companies,
determines how the product or company achieved their performance level, and uses the
information to improve its own performance.

ISO 9000. - ISO 9000 is a set of international standards on quality management and
quality assurance developed to help companies affectively document the quality system
elements to be implemented to maintain an efficient quality system. The standards,
initially published in 1987, are not specific to any particular industry, product or service.
The standards underwent major revision in 2000 and now include ISO
9000:2000(definitions). ISO 9001:2000 (requirements).