Glossary
Industrial Engineering Technician Terms & Vocabulary
15 essential industrial engineering technician terms with plain-English definitions: the vocabulary you’ll hear in training and on day one.
Key industrial engineering technician vocabulary
These 15 terms come up constantly in industrial engineering technician training, on the job and in interviews. Knowing them helps you follow instructions, document accurately and sound prepared.
- 5S
- Workplace organization.
- Allowance
- Time added for fatigue and delays.
- Bill of materials
- List of parts.
- Changeover
- Switching products.
- Cycle time
- Time per unit.
- Downtime
- Lost running time.
- Fixture
- Holds parts during work.
- Layout
- Arrangement of equipment.
- Lean
- Waste reduction.
- Pareto chart
- Bar chart of top causes.
- Routing
- Steps a part follows.
- Scrap
- Bad parts.
- Standard time
- Expected time for a task.
- Time study
- Measuring work time.
- Work instruction
- Step-by-step job guide.
Practice these terms
Test yourself with the free Industrial Engineering Technician practice test: it includes vocabulary questions built from this list. For a complete course, see Industrial Engineering Technician training.
Browse terms from every career in our career glossary.