Have you ever wondered, what does it mean actual finish date?  The actual finish date is the point in time that an activity, work or the project was actually completed.

  A huddle is an action by a team to strategize, support and motivate one another towards accomplishing or aligning objectives and goals.  Huddles are typically held before an activity takes place.  Huddles can be held in any area or department of an organization, they do not need specific rooms just a format to conduct the huddle.  The main difference between a huddle and a meeting is both how it is conducted and the amount of time the huddle takes compared to a meeting.  Huddles can be performed in under 7 minutes.

  The 8 forms of waste are also referred to as the 8 forms of muda.  A Lean strategy attempts to remove any and all forms of waste from business processes.

  ABC inventory control is a frequently used method of control for inventory.  ​The ABC analysis divides inventory into three categories, with “A” items being the most important and “C” items being the least important.

  An unusual, uncommon or irregularly high product demand that is outside the normal parameters established by the management policy is called an Abnormal Demand.

  Whether its Lean Six Sigma, just in time or a pull system, flow is the term used to refer to a production or service environment that continuously moves value through the value stream without interruptions.  An environment that has flow would have very low levels of muda, muri and mura.  Flow can also be described as the progression of tasks involved in creating products and information minus stoppages, delays, scrap, rework, reversals and backflows.  Flow applies to both materials and information.

  Actual demand is made up of "actual" or "real" customer orders.  This can sometimes include allocations/reservations of items for order, ingredients or items driven by MRP for orders, or raw materials for production or distribution against orders.

  Standard work is a detailed definition of the current agreed-upon steps needed for a person to complete one work cycle in the absolute best and most reliable method possible.

  Change management is a method or an approach that is generally systematic in the way it works.  Different change management approaches can be used when dealing with the transformation or transition of a business or organizations objectives, goals, processes, culture and of course technology.  It even works with behavior.  One of the main purpose of change management is simply to guide or manage the change that a company, department or individual will experience during transitions. 

  Brainstorming is one of the most powerful techniques a team or individual can use to address topics and solve issues.  Brainstorming promotes innovative thinking and helps people creatively use their skills and talents on a particular subject. 

  Upstream is a term used to refer to any given process step that occurs before the current step.  Looking upstream often can be a valuable technique used to find the actual causes of an initial effect.  You will hear this term used in reference to value streams or process maps.

  A Customer is any party that receives or requests goods or services.  Customers are oftenties considered to be one of the most important participants in a supply chain.  They drive value.  They create demand and they express wants and needs that can be transformed.

  The 3P's represent people, process and product.  The 3P's are the focus of the continuous improvement strategy TQM or Total Quality Management.

  DMADV is the methodology used when designing new processes that did not exist prior to their design.  

  Master Scheduling is the process that a master scheduler uses to create the master schedule.  This includes but is not limited to how the generation, review, management and adjustments of a master schedule are done.

  Have you ever wanted something to snack on really bad, so you jump up head to the store and when you get there they are fresh out of inventory?  Have you ever made the decision to purchase a new vehicle and you go to the dealer and the vehicle you want isn’t there so you go home and order it online?  Inventory stock out costs.  These are both examples of inventory stock out costs.  Stockouts occur when the inventory you have on hand is not enough to fulfill the customers demand needs.  Likewise a stock out might be when there is inventory, but the inventory is not what you wanted.

  A Non-Value added activity is any activity that adds no value to the product, service or information.  Non-value added activities typically have three characteristics that are fairly simple to identify.   

  Value is a perception of the worth, regard, importance or usefulness of a good or service.  In other words, it is ​the worth of a product or a service when it is delivered to your customers. 

  The Value Stream is the entire set of activities that are required to design, produce and provide services or goods.  In other words, it is all of the activities in your organization that are needed to design, manufacture and deliver products or services to your customers.

  Downtime is the period of time during which a piece of equipment or a machine is not functional or can not work.

  RCCP verifies that you have sufficient capacity available to meet the capacity requirements for your master schedules.

  The control plan is a tool used in the control phase of the DMAIC method. The tool is used for documenting the functional elements of quality control that are to be implemented in order to ensure that quality standards are met for a particular product, process, project or service.

  The mean absolute deviation or MAD as it is often abbreviated, of a dataset is the average or "mean" distance between each data point from the data set and the mean/average.  This will give you an idea of the amount of variability in a dataset.  MAD can be calculated from both observations and the arithmetic average (mean) of those observations.  Another option when calculating MAD is to calculate based on actual data minus forecasted data.  If forecasting or being used for future analysis you can apply different weights to your forecast or use exponential smoothing in an attempt to make your forecast more accurate.  In most cases however mean absolute deviation uses actual data.

  The house of Toyota is a graphical representation of the Toyota Production System depicted in the form of a house.  Taiichi Ohno was given credit for much of the systems development.  The Toyota Production System works together with 5 key elements:​

  A push system is the production or performance of any item or activity performed at required times by a given schedule that has been planned in advance.  Many push systems are built mainly to forecast.  Push systems can also include issuing material or performing an activity based on a schedule rather than need.  Push systems create excess inventory which is one of the 8 forms of waste.