Glossary
Industrial Cleaning Operator Terms & Vocabulary
15 essential industrial cleaning operator terms with plain-English definitions: the vocabulary you’ll hear in training and on day one.
Key industrial cleaning operator vocabulary
These 15 terms come up constantly in industrial cleaning operator training, on the job and in interviews. Knowing them helps you follow instructions, document accurately and sound prepared.
- Degreasing
- Removing oil.
- Drag-out
- Chemicals carried out.
- First article
- First part checked before a run.
- Inhibitor
- Protects base metal.
- Lockout/tagout
- Energy isolation before servicing.
- Neutralize
- Balance pH.
- Pickling
- Removing scale with acid.
- PPE
- Personal protective equipment.
- Rinse
- Removing chemicals.
- Scale
- Oxide layer.
- Scrap
- Parts that fail inspection.
- SOP
- Standard operating procedure.
- Titration
- Chemistry test.
- Ultrasonic cleaning
- Cleaning with sound waves.
- Water break test
- Checks for oil.
Practice these terms
Test yourself with the free Industrial Cleaning Operator practice test: it includes vocabulary questions built from this list. For a complete course, see Industrial Cleaning Operator training.
Browse terms from every career in our career glossary.