Glossary
Industrial Engineer Terms & Vocabulary
15 essential industrial engineer terms with plain-English definitions: the vocabulary you’ll hear in training and on day one.
Key industrial engineer vocabulary
These 15 terms come up constantly in industrial engineer training, on the job and in interviews. Knowing them helps you follow instructions, document accurately and sound prepared.
- Capacity planning
- Matching resources to demand.
- Cycle time
- Time to complete one unit.
- DMAIC
- Define, measure, analyze, improve, control.
- Ergonomics
- Fitting work to people.
- Kanban
- Pull signal system.
- Line balancing
- Evening out work across stations.
- Poka-yoke
- Mistake-proofing.
- Simulation
- Modeling a system.
- Spaghetti diagram
- Map of movement.
- SPC
- Statistical process control.
- Standard work
- Best method documented.
- Takt time
- Pace to meet demand.
- Time study
- Measuring work time.
- Value stream map
- Map of material and info flow.
- Work cell
- Grouped workstations.
Practice these terms
Test yourself with the free Industrial Engineer practice test: it includes vocabulary questions built from this list. For a complete course, see Industrial Engineer training.
Browse terms from every career in our career glossary.