Glossary
Industrial Production Manager Terms & Vocabulary
15 essential industrial production manager terms with plain-English definitions: the vocabulary you’ll hear in training and on day one.
Key industrial production manager vocabulary
These 15 terms come up constantly in industrial production manager training, on the job and in interviews. Knowing them helps you follow instructions, document accurately and sound prepared.
- 5S
- Sort, set, shine, standardize, sustain.
- Bottleneck
- Slowest step.
- Capacity
- Maximum output.
- Cost per unit
- Cost to make one item.
- Downtime
- Time machines aren’t running.
- Gemba
- Where work happens.
- Kaizen
- Continuous improvement event.
- Lean
- Eliminating waste.
- MES
- Manufacturing execution system.
- OEE
- Overall equipment effectiveness.
- Root cause
- Underlying reason.
- Scrap rate
- Share of bad parts.
- Standard work
- Best known method.
- Takt time
- Pace needed to meet demand.
- Throughput
- Units made per time.
Practice these terms
Test yourself with the free Industrial Production Manager practice test: it includes vocabulary questions built from this list. For a complete course, see Industrial Production Manager training.
Browse terms from every career in our career glossary.