Cash to cash cycle time looks at the amount of time, usually days, of working capital a business has tied up in managing its inventory or supply chain.  Like many metrics, the more efficient the cash-to-cash cycle time is, the fewer days an organization's cash is unavailable for use.

  Visual control refers to methods, devices, activities and or systems which are designed to assist in the management or control of our activities, processes, parts and or machines through visual and or other sensory means.

  Formally defined, a fill rate is the percentage of customer orders that a company can ship or, “fill”, immediately from the inventory you have on hand without placing backorders, running out of stock or missing sales.

  Inventory waste is any unnecessary storage of materials, products or information.

  PDCA or plan-do-check-act is a four step method used in lean, quality improvements and other continuous improvement strategies.  

  A Defect is any output from a service or a product that does not meet the customer required specifications, standards or requirements. 

  Inventory Turnover is the number of times your inventory cycles or turns over in a year or other defined period.  Inventory turnover can help an organization understand how efficiently their inventory is supporting sales.  The inventory turnover number implies how often inventory was bought and sold throughout the year or other defined period.  Put another way, inventory turnover is an indicator of how well a business is using their inventory.  For example, how many dollars of sales from a cost perspective are being supported by each dollar of inventory.