Shop-floor terms, without the jargon.

Termos

Production reporting

A record of what happened in production: how much was made, on which order, by whom and how long it took. In Mestti, quantity and time come from the sensor and the operator gives the reasons.

Hidden capacity

Output the factory could already achieve with its current machines and people, but loses in short stops, waiting, long setups and slow pace. It differs from idle capacity, which is a lack of demand.

Cycle time

The time a machine takes to complete one production cycle. Compared with engineering’s standard cycle, it shows whether the machine is on pace.

Availability

The share of planned time in which the machine is actually producing. Stops, setups and waiting reduce availability. It is the first factor of OEE.

ERP

Enterprise resource planning: sales, purchasing, inventory, finance and tax. It records what was sold and invoiced, but not what happens minute by minute at the machine. MES or ERP?

MES

Manufacturing execution system: follows production on the shop floor, between the order and delivery: machine queues, reporting, stops, indicators and quality.

Micro-stop

A short stop of seconds or a few minutes that is almost never written down by hand. Added up over a shift, micro-stops often hide a lot of time.

MTBF

Mean time between failures (stops). The higher it is, the longer the machine runs without interruption.

MTTR

Mean time to repair: the average duration of stops. It shows how long the factory takes to get back to producing after something stops.

Non-conformity

A part or process outside the specification. In Mestti, scrap and rework are recorded and count in the machine’s quality indicator.

OEE

Overall equipment effectiveness: availability × performance × quality. It combines downtime, below-target pace and bad parts in one number. How to calculate it

Production planning and control

Production planning and control: decides what to make, on which machine and when, and checks whether the plan is being followed.

Parts per cycle

How many parts come out each time the machine completes a cycle. With a 4-cavity mold, it’s 4. Together with cycle time, it sets the hourly target.

Performance

How much the machine produced compared with what it should have produced while it was running. It is the second factor of OEE.

Quality (in OEE)

The share of parts produced that came out good, with no scrap or rework. It is the third factor of OEE.

Scrap and rework

Scrap is a discarded part; rework is a part that has to be redone or fixed. Both consume machine time without producing good output.

Scheduling

Deciding the order in which operations go into each machine, with expected start and finish. How it works in Mestti

Setup

Preparing the machine for a new product: changing a mold or tool, or adjusting settings. Long or frequent setups reduce availability.