Glossary
Production Supervisor Terms & Vocabulary
15 essential production supervisor terms with plain-English definitions: the vocabulary you’ll hear in training and on day one.
Key production supervisor vocabulary
These 15 terms come up constantly in production supervisor training, on the job and in interviews. Knowing them helps you follow instructions, document accurately and sound prepared.
- 5 Whys
- Asking why repeatedly to find root cause.
- Bottleneck
- The slowest step that limits output.
- Changeover
- Switching a line from one product to another.
- Corrective action
- Steps to fix a problem and prevent recurrence.
- Downtime
- Time when equipment isn’t producing.
- ERP
- Enterprise resource planning software.
- Gemba
- The place where work happens; a gemba walk is observing it.
- Huddle
- A short team meeting at the start of a shift.
- KPI
- Key performance indicator.
- MES
- Manufacturing execution system.
- OEE
- Overall equipment effectiveness: availability, performance and quality combined.
- Root cause analysis
- Finding the underlying cause of a problem.
- Scrap rate
- The percentage of parts thrown away.
- SMED
- Single-minute exchange of dies: a method to speed changeovers.
- Standard work
- The agreed best way to do a task.
Practice these terms
Test yourself with the free Production Supervisor practice test: it includes vocabulary questions built from this list. For a complete course, see Production Supervisor training.
Browse terms from every career in our career glossary.