341 Terms

The ERP & On-Prem AI Glossary

Straight definitions for the terminology that shows up in Infor SyteLine, Infor LN, Baan, manufacturing operations, defense compliance, and on-prem AI - written by consultants who work in these systems daily, not by a marketing team.

Infor SyteLine

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Infor SyteLine

AHL (Automatic Handling Logic)

AHL (Automatic Handling Logic) is the declarative rule layer in SyteLine and its Mongoose framework that automatically performs standard record behavior - defaulting values, validating input, and cascading updates - when data or form events fire, without a developer writing custom code.

Infor SyteLine

IDO (Intelligent Data Object)

An IDO (Intelligent Data Object) is the middle-tier business object in SyteLine and the Mongoose framework that exposes database tables as named properties, methods, and collections, so forms, mobile apps, and REST clients all read and write data through one governed layer.

Infor SyteLine

Mongoose Framework

Mongoose is Infor's metadata-driven application development framework that SyteLine and CloudSuite Industrial are built on. It renders forms, exposes data through IDOs, runs an event system, and lets customers extend or build applications without altering delivered source code.

Infor SyteLine

BOD (Business Object Document)

A BOD (Business Object Document) is the standardized XML message format Infor applications use to exchange data through ION. Each BOD pairs a verb such as Sync or Process with a noun such as ItemMaster, based on the open OAGIS integration standard.

Infor SyteLine

Infor ION

Infor ION is the integration backbone of Infor OS. It routes BOD messages between Infor applications such as SyteLine, LN, and M3 and third-party systems, and adds document flows, workflow, event alerts, and a monitored, replayable message trail.

Infor SyteLine

APS (Advanced Planning and Scheduling)

APS (Advanced Planning and Scheduling) is SyteLine's memory-resident planning engine that schedules production against finite material and capacity constraints, producing realistic operation start and finish dates and enabling capable-to-promise responses during order entry.

Infor SyteLine

DataView

A DataView in SyteLine is a user-configurable grid that reads data through an IDO, letting users choose columns, apply filters, group and total rows, and export to Excel - producing ad hoc analysis without a developer or a formal report.

Infor SyteLine

SyteLine Event System

The SyteLine Event System is the framework's rule engine that detects defined business events - a record saved, a status changed, a threshold crossed - and runs configured handlers that send notifications, request approvals, execute SQL, or call custom logic.

Infor SyteLine

Form Personalization

Form personalization in SyteLine is the ability to modify a form's appearance and behavior - hiding fields, relabeling, reordering, setting defaults - at user, group, or site level, stored as a layer above the delivered form so the base object is never altered.

Infor SyteLine

Item Master

The item master in SyteLine is the central record that defines every part the business buys, makes, stocks, or sells - carrying identity, units of measure, planning parameters, costing method, product code, and quality attributes that drive nearly every downstream transaction.

Infor SyteLine

Job Order

A job order in SyteLine is the production work order that authorises manufacturing a quantity of an item. It carries its own copy of the bill of material and routing, collects material, labor, and overhead costs, and moves through a defined status life cycle.

Infor SyteLine

Estimate Job

An estimate job in SyteLine is a non-production job used to cost a potential order. It carries materials and routing operations like a real job so SyteLine can calculate a full cost, but it creates no demand, consumes no inventory, and is ignored by planning.

Infor SyteLine

Current Operations

Current Operations in SyteLine is the shop-floor-facing view of job operations currently available or in process, filtered by work center or resource, from which operators report quantity complete, scrap, and labor time against the job.

Infor SyteLine

Work Center

A work center in SyteLine is the production location where a routing operation is performed. It carries the labor, machine, and overhead rates used to cost that operation and links to the resource group that APS uses for finite capacity scheduling.

Infor SyteLine

Resource Group

A resource group in SyteLine is a set of interchangeable machines, cells, or people that operations schedule against. It carries the capacity, calendar, and constraint data that APS uses to place work into finite time windows.

Infor SyteLine

Backflush

Backflush in SyteLine is the automatic deduction of material and posting of labor when an operation or job is reported complete. Instead of issuing each component manually, the system relieves inventory at standard quantity based on the quantity reported.

Infor SyteLine

Phantom BOM

A phantom BOM is a subassembly that exists in the bill of material for engineering clarity but is never stocked or built as its own order. Planning blows straight through it, passing demand directly to its components on the parent job.

Infor SyteLine

Product Code

A product code in SyteLine is a required grouping assigned to every item that determines which general ledger accounts inventory, cost of sales, and revenue transactions post to, and serves as the primary dimension for product-line reporting.

Infor SyteLine

SyteLine Replication

SyteLine replication is the built-in mechanism that copies data between sites and databases in a multi-site installation. Replication categories define what moves, replication rules define where it goes, and the framework queues and delivers changes between site databases.

Infor SyteLine

Multi-Site (SyteLine)

Multi-site in SyteLine is the architecture that lets one installation run several plants, warehouses, or legal entities as distinct sites - each with its own inventory, planning, and transactions - while sharing master data and consolidating financially.

Infor SyteLine

CloudSuite Industrial

CloudSuite Industrial (CSI) is the cloud-delivered edition of Infor SyteLine, hosted by Infor on AWS alongside the Infor OS platform. It uses the same Mongoose application but adds managed updates and restricts customization and direct database access.

Infor SyteLine

QCS (Quality Control System)

QCS (Quality Control System) is SyteLine's quality management module. It adds inspection plans and specifications, test result recording, nonconformance and corrective action tracking, and supplier quality control to the core ERP transaction flow.

Infor SyteLine

AES (Application Event System)

AES (Application Event System) is the Mongoose framework component in SyteLine that detects defined application events, evaluates conditions, and executes configured handler actions such as notifications, prompts, SQL statements, and IDO method calls.

Infor SyteLine

FormSync

FormSync in SyteLine is the Mongoose capability that keeps multiple open forms synchronized on the same record context, so moving to a different order or item in one form automatically refreshes the related forms to show data for that same record.

Infor SyteLine

IDO Collection

An IDO collection in SyteLine is the in-memory set of rows a LoadCollection call returns from an IDO. It holds the property values plus each row's state - unchanged, modified, inserted, or deleted - so the framework knows exactly what to persist on update.

Infor LN & Baan

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Infor LN & Baan

Baan IV

Baan IV is the mid-1990s release of Baan Company's ERP suite, built on the bshell runtime with 3GL and 4GL development tools, package-based modules such as td, ti and tf, and multi-company table sharing.

Infor LN & Baan

BaanERP (Baan V)

BaanERP, also called Baan V, is the late-1990s successor to Baan IV. It introduced a separate Warehousing package, Enterprise Planning, and a component-based Windows architecture, and it is the direct code ancestor of SSA ERP LN and today's Infor LN.

Infor LN & Baan

Infor LN

Infor LN is Infor's enterprise ERP suite for complex discrete manufacturers, descended from Baan IV and Baan V. It is deployed as on-premises LN 10.x or as an Infor CloudSuite edition, and covers manufacturing, warehousing, projects, service and multi-company finance.

Infor LN & Baan

DEM (Dynamic Enterprise Modeling)

DEM (Dynamic Enterprise Modeling) is Baan and Infor LN's business process modeling layer. It captures an organization as enterprise structure, business function, business process and organization models, then generates role-based menus so each user sees only the sessions their process steps require.

Infor LN & Baan

Baan Session

A Baan session is the atomic executable unit of Baan and Infor LN - one screen, report or batch program - identified by a coded name such as tdsls4101m000, where the letters give the package and module and the digits give the session number.

Infor LN & Baan

Table Sharing

Table sharing is the Baan and Infor LN mechanism that lets several companies read and write the same physical database table, so master data such as items, business partners and currencies is maintained once and used by every company that shares it.

Infor LN & Baan

Logistic Company

A logistic company in Baan and Infor LN is a company number that holds operational data such as items, warehouses, and sales, purchase, production and warehouse orders. Each logistic company is linked to exactly one financial company that carries its ledger.

Infor LN & Baan

Financial Company

A financial company in Baan and Infor LN is a company number that owns the general ledger: the chart of accounts, dimensions, fiscal calendars, currency setup and all financial transactions for one or more logistic companies linked to it.

Infor LN & Baan

Baan 3GL and 4GL

Baan 3GL and 4GL are the two programming languages of Baan and Infor LN. 4GL is the event-driven script attached to a session and its form fields, while 3GL is the C-like language used for libraries, DAL objects and standalone programs.

Infor LN & Baan

Porting Set

A porting set is the platform-specific layer of Baan and Infor LN that adapts the application to a given operating system and database. It ships the bshell executable, the database drivers and system utilities, and is versioned and patched independently of the application software.

Infor LN & Baan

Bshell

The bshell is the Baan and Infor LN virtual machine. It loads compiled pseudo-code for sessions, scripts and reports, executes it, and translates the application's database calls into native SQL through porting set drivers - one bshell process typically serves one user session.

Infor LN & Baan

Exchange Scheme

An exchange scheme is the reusable definition in the Baan and Infor LN Exchange module that maps external flat-file records to LN tables field by field, in either direction, so data can be imported or exported in batches without writing custom programs.

Infor LN & Baan

Infor LN Studio

Infor LN Studio is the development environment for Infor LN. It gives developers an Eclipse-based workspace to write and debug 3GL and 4GL code, design sessions, forms and reports, and manage components and VRC software layers against a live LN development environment.

Infor LN & Baan

LN Extensions

LN Extensions are Infor LN's supported customization framework: extension scripts and objects attached to standard sessions, tables and business logic through defined extension points, stored outside standard code so vendor upgrades and cloud updates do not overwrite them.

Infor LN & Baan

Freeze and Unfreeze (LN Planning)

Freeze and unfreeze are Infor LN Enterprise Planning actions that lock planned orders or planned quantities so a planning run cannot change or delete them. Freezing protects near-term commitments inside the planning horizon; unfreezing returns the records to normal regeneration.

Infor LN & Baan

Warehouse Order

A warehouse order is the execution document in Infor LN Warehousing that carries out an inbound, outbound or transfer movement. It is generated from an originating order such as a sales, purchase, production or transfer order, and its order type defines the procedure steps.

Infor LN & Baan

Handling Unit

A handling unit in Infor LN is an identified physical package - a pallet, carton or container - tracked with its own ID. Handling units nest hierarchically, carry item, lot and serial data, and move through warehousing and shipping as a single scannable entity.

Infor LN & Baan

Cost Component

A cost component in Infor LN is a bucket that classifies part of an item's cost - material, operation, subcontracting, surcharge or general cost - so standard and actual cost prices can be broken down, rolled up through the bill of material and compared.

Infor LN & Baan

Project Pegging

Project pegging in Infor LN links demand, supply, inventory and cost to a specific project, element or activity. Pegged material is reserved for that project only and its costs flow to the project budget, which is how contract-driven manufacturers segregate program inventory.

Infor LN & Baan

Integration Transaction

An integration transaction is the record Infor LN creates when a logistic event such as a receipt, issue, shipment or production completion must post to finance. Mapping schemes translate each transaction into the correct debit and credit ledger accounts and dimensions.

Infor LN & Baan

Multisite (Infor LN)

Multisite in Infor LN is the configuration pattern for running several plants, warehouses or legal entities in one environment using sites, enterprise units and multiple companies, with intercompany trade rules that price and post transfers between them automatically.

Infor LN & Baan

Enterprise Planning

Enterprise Planning is Infor LN's supply planning engine. It runs master planning and order planning across plan items, sites and companies, generating planned orders and reschedule signals from demand, inventory, lead times and the supply strategies defined per plan item.

Infor LN & Baan

LN Item Code

An LN item code is the unique key identifying a part, product, service or cost item in Infor LN. It is carried on every order line, bill of material and inventory record, and its length and segmentation are fixed in the data dictionary before go-live.

Infor LN & Baan

LN Bill of Material

An LN bill of material is the parent-child list defining which components and quantities go into a manufactured item in Infor LN. Each line carries a position number, net quantity, scrap factor, effective dates and, optionally, the routing operation that consumes it.

Infor LN & Baan

Baan/LN Tools Package

The Tools package is Baan and Infor LN's own development and administration layer. It holds the data dictionary, session and form definitions, the 3GL and 4GL compilers, VRC software layering, authorization management, job scheduling, company setup and the Exchange module.

ERP Core Concepts

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ERP Core Concepts

ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning)

ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) is integrated business software that runs finance, manufacturing, supply chain, sales, and HR processes on a single shared database, so a transaction entered once updates every dependent function in real time.

ERP Core Concepts

MRP (Material Requirements Planning)

MRP (Material Requirements Planning) is the ERP calculation that explodes demand through bills of materials, nets it against on-hand and on-order inventory, and offsets by lead time to produce timed purchase and work order suggestions.

ERP Core Concepts

MRP II

MRP II (Manufacturing Resource Planning) is the closed-loop extension of MRP that adds capacity planning, shop floor control, purchasing execution, and financial simulation, so the material plan is validated against labor, machine, and money constraints before release.

ERP Core Concepts

BOM (Bill of Materials)

A BOM (bill of materials) is the structured, hierarchical list of components, sub-assemblies, and quantities required to produce one unit of a parent item, and it is the primary input MRP explodes to calculate material requirements.

ERP Core Concepts

Routing

A routing is the ERP record that defines the ordered sequence of operations required to manufacture an item, specifying for each step the work center or machine, setup time, run time per unit, move and queue time, and any outside processing.

ERP Core Concepts

Lead Time

Lead time is the elapsed time between initiating an order and having the material available for use. In ERP it is the offset MRP applies when back-scheduling a planned order from its due date to its release date.

ERP Core Concepts

Safety Stock

Safety stock is buffer inventory carried above expected demand to protect against variability in demand and supply during replenishment lead time. In ERP it is netted out of available inventory so MRP plans replenishment before the buffer is consumed.

ERP Core Concepts

Reorder Point

A reorder point is the inventory level at which a replenishment order is triggered. It equals expected demand during the replenishment lead time plus safety stock, so stock on hand covers usage until the new supply arrives.

ERP Core Concepts

Lot Sizing

Lot sizing is the ERP rule that determines how much to order or produce in each replenishment, converting net requirements into order quantities by balancing setup or ordering cost against inventory carrying cost.

ERP Core Concepts

ATP (Available to Promise)

ATP (available to promise) is the portion of inventory and scheduled production not yet committed to existing customer orders, calculated by date so order entry can quote a delivery a customer can rely on.

ERP Core Concepts

CTP (Capable to Promise)

CTP (capable to promise) is an order promising method that goes beyond available inventory by simulating whether required material and work center capacity can be obtained in time, returning a delivery date the plant can actually achieve.

ERP Core Concepts

MPS (Master Production Schedule)

An MPS (master production schedule) is the time-phased statement of which end items a plant will produce, in what quantities, and in which periods. It is the anchor demand input MRP explodes into component requirements.

ERP Core Concepts

Demand Planning

Demand planning is the process of forecasting future customer demand by combining statistical analysis of shipment history with sales, marketing, and customer intelligence, producing the consensus demand signal that drives master scheduling and MRP.

ERP Core Concepts

Capacity Planning

Capacity planning is the process of comparing the labor and machine hours a production plan requires against the hours each work center actually has available, identifying overloads early enough to reschedule, add shifts, or outsource.

ERP Core Concepts

Work Order

A work order is the ERP document that authorizes production of a defined quantity of an item by a due date. It snapshots the bill of materials and routing, drives material issues and labor reporting, and collects actual cost for the job.

ERP Core Concepts

Purchase Requisition

A purchase requisition is an internal request to procure goods or services, routed for approval against budget and authority limits before a buyer sources it and converts it into a purchase order sent to a supplier.

ERP Core Concepts

Three-Way Match

A three-way match is the accounts payable control that compares the purchase order, the goods receipt, and the supplier invoice on quantity and price before releasing payment, ensuring a company pays only for what it ordered and actually received.

ERP Core Concepts

General Ledger

The general ledger is the central accounting record of a business, where every financial transaction posts as balanced debits and credits against accounts in the chart of accounts, producing the trial balance behind all financial statements.

ERP Core Concepts

Chart of Accounts

A chart of accounts is the organized list of accounts a business uses to classify every financial transaction, typically structured with segments for natural account plus dimensions such as site, department, product line, or project.

ERP Core Concepts

Period Close

Period close is the recurring process of finalizing a fiscal period: completing transactions, reconciling subledgers to the general ledger, posting accruals and adjustments, running costing, then locking the period so reported results cannot change.

ERP Core Concepts

Standard Cost

Standard cost is a predetermined per-unit cost for material, labor, and overhead, set in advance and used to value inventory and transactions. Differences between standard and actual are captured as variances that isolate where cost deviated.

ERP Core Concepts

Actual Cost

Actual cost is the real cost incurred to produce or acquire an item, accumulated from the specific material prices paid, labor hours reported, and overhead applied, rather than from a predetermined standard.

ERP Core Concepts

Landed Cost

Landed cost is the total cost of bringing purchased goods into inventory, combining the supplier price with freight, insurance, customs duty, tariffs, brokerage, and handling, so inventory is valued at what the material truly cost to acquire.

ERP Core Concepts

Cycle Counting

Cycle counting is the practice of continuously verifying inventory accuracy by counting a small subset of items each day or week, rather than shutting down for one annual wall-to-wall physical inventory.

ERP Core Concepts

ABC Analysis

ABC analysis is an inventory classification method that ranks items by annual consumption value and groups them into A, B, and C classes, so planning attention, counting frequency, and control effort are concentrated where the money is.

ERP Core Concepts

Inventory Turnover

Inventory turnover is the number of times a company sells and replaces its inventory in a period, calculated as cost of goods sold divided by average inventory value. Higher turns mean less cash tied up in stock.

ERP Core Concepts

FIFO Costing (First-In, First-Out)

FIFO costing is an inventory valuation method that assigns the cost of the oldest receipts to units issued or sold first, leaving the most recent purchase costs in ending inventory. It tracks cost in layers by receipt.

ERP Core Concepts

Weighted Average Cost

Weighted average cost values inventory at one blended unit cost: total cost of units on hand divided by total quantity. In a perpetual system the average is recalculated after every receipt, and issues leave at the current average.

ERP Core Concepts

Economic Order Quantity (EOQ)

Economic order quantity (EOQ) is the order size that minimizes the sum of ordering cost and inventory holding cost for an item with steady demand. The formula is the square root of (2 x annual demand x cost per order / annual holding cost per unit).

ERP Core Concepts

Obsolete Inventory (Excess and Obsolete Stock)

Obsolete inventory is stock with little or no expected future sales or usage because of design changes, end-of-life products, demand decline, or shelf-life expiry. Excess inventory is stock above forecast need. Together they are called E&O.

ERP Core Concepts

Inventory Shrinkage

Inventory shrinkage is the difference between inventory recorded in the system and what is physically present, caused by theft, damage, spoilage, counting or transaction errors, and unrecorded scrap. It is measured at cost or as a percent of sales.

ERP Core Concepts

Perpetual Inventory System

A perpetual inventory system updates on-hand quantity and inventory value in real time with every receipt, issue, transfer and adjustment, so book balances are always current. A periodic system updates only after a physical count.

ERP Core Concepts

Consignment Inventory

Consignment inventory is stock physically held by one party, such as a manufacturer or retailer, but legally owned by the supplier until it is consumed or sold. Ownership and the liability transfer at the point of use or sale.

ERP Core Concepts

Days Inventory Outstanding (DIO)

Days inventory outstanding (DIO) is the average number of days inventory sits before being sold, calculated as average inventory divided by cost of goods sold, multiplied by the days in the period. Lower DIO releases cash.

ERP Core Concepts

Inventory Write-Down

An inventory write-down reduces the recorded value of inventory when its net realizable value falls below cost, because of obsolescence, damage or falling prices. A write-off removes the remaining value entirely.

ERP Core Concepts

Activity-Based Costing (ABC)

Activity-based costing assigns overhead to products based on the activities that actually consume resources, such as setups, inspections or material handling, using a cost driver for each activity, instead of spreading all overhead on direct labor hours.

ERP Core Concepts

Cost Roll-Up

A cost roll-up calculates the cost of manufactured items by summing the cost of purchased components, routing labor, machine time and overhead from the lowest BOM level up to the finished product. The result is usually saved as standard cost.

ERP Core Concepts

Purchase Price Variance (PPV)

Purchase price variance is the difference between the standard cost of a purchased item and the actual price paid, multiplied by quantity. A positive or negative balance in the PPV account shows how purchasing costs compare with plan.

ERP Core Concepts

Cost of Goods Manufactured (COGM)

Cost of goods manufactured is the total cost of goods completed during a period: direct materials used, direct labor and applied overhead, plus beginning work in process minus ending work in process. It moves into finished goods and then to cost of goods sold.

ERP Core Concepts

Inventory Valuation Methods (FIFO, Average, Standard)

Inventory valuation methods determine the cost assigned to stock on hand and to items sold. The common ones are FIFO, LIFO where allowed, weighted or moving average, specific identification and standard cost.

ERP Core Concepts

Goods Received Not Invoiced (GRNI)

Goods received not invoiced, also called GRNI or GR/IR, is the accrued liability for items received into stock for which the supplier invoice has not yet been matched or posted. It is cleared when the invoice is verified.

ERP Core Concepts

Intercompany Eliminations

Intercompany eliminations are consolidation entries that remove transactions and balances between legal entities of the same group, such as intercompany sales, loans and unrealized inventory profit, so group financials show only dealings with outside parties.

ERP Core Concepts

Purchase Order (PO)

A purchase order (PO) is a document a buyer issues to a supplier committing to buy specified items or services at agreed quantities, prices and delivery dates. In ERP it drives receiving, invoice matching, open commitments and supply in MRP.

ERP Core Concepts

Request for Quotation (RFQ)

A request for quotation (RFQ) is a document sent to several suppliers asking them to quote price, lead time and terms for specified items or services. The buyer compares the responses and awards one as a purchase order or contract.

ERP Core Concepts

Blanket Purchase Order

A blanket purchase order is a standing agreement with a supplier to buy an item or group of items over a period, typically at a fixed price or up to a total value. Individual deliveries are called off through releases against it.

ERP Core Concepts

Goods Receipt (GRN)

A goods receipt, also called a goods received note (GRN), is the transaction that records material arriving against a purchase order. It increases inventory, updates open PO quantities, and usually creates an accrual until the supplier invoice is matched.

ERP Core Concepts

Drop Shipment

A drop shipment is a sale where the supplier ships goods directly to your customer instead of to your warehouse. The seller links a sales order to a purchase order, never holds the stock, and still invoices the customer.

ERP Core Concepts

Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)

Role-based access control grants ERP permissions to roles that match job functions, then assigns users to roles, instead of setting permissions user by user. It makes access consistent, reviewable and easier to remove.

ERP Core Concepts

Multi-Tenant ERP

A multi-tenant ERP runs many customers on shared infrastructure and a single code line, with logical data separation. Single-tenant gives each customer its own instance, allowing more isolation and customization at higher cost.

ERP Core Concepts

Two-Tier ERP

Two-tier ERP is a strategy where a large corporate ERP runs at headquarters while subsidiaries or plants run a different, often lighter ERP, integrated for consolidation, master data and intercompany flows.

ERP Core Concepts

RPO and RTO (Recovery Objectives)

RPO (recovery point objective) is the maximum acceptable data loss measured in time. RTO (recovery time objective) is the maximum acceptable time to restore service. Together they set ERP backup and disaster recovery design.

ERP Core Concepts

ERP Sandbox (Test Environment)

An ERP sandbox is a separate non-production environment, usually a copy of production configuration and data, used to test customizations, upgrades and integrations safely before changing the live system.

ERP Core Concepts

ERP Data Archiving

ERP data archiving moves old, closed transactions out of the live database into cheaper, read-only storage while keeping them searchable, to improve performance and meet retention rules without losing history.

ERP Core Concepts

Inventory Record Accuracy (IRA)

Inventory record accuracy (IRA) is the percentage of item-location records whose system quantity matches the physical count within an agreed tolerance. It shows how far MRP and order promising can trust the on-hand balances in the ERP.

ERP Core Concepts

Bill of Lading (BOL)

A bill of lading (BOL) is the document a carrier issues to confirm it received goods for shipment. It acts as a receipt, a contract of carriage and, in some forms, a document of title. ERPs print it from the shipping transaction.

ERP Core Concepts

Pick, Pack and Ship

Pick, pack and ship is the three-stage order fulfillment sequence: pull items from stock against a sales order, pack them with documents and labels, then hand them to a carrier. Each stage posts a transaction in the ERP.

ERP Core Concepts

Packing List

A packing list, also called a packing slip, is a document that itemizes what is in a shipment: items, quantities, package counts and references. It travels with the goods and lets the receiver check contents without opening an invoice.

ERP Core Concepts

Configure, Price, Quote (CPQ)

Configure, Price, Quote (CPQ) is software that guides a salesperson through selecting valid product options, calculates the price from rules and discounts, and produces a quote document, then passes the accepted configuration to the ERP as a sales order.

ERP Core Concepts

Request for Quote (RFQ)

A Request for Quote (RFQ) is a formal request from a buyer asking a supplier to state a price, lead time and terms for specified items. In ERP it becomes a sales quote on the selling side or a sourcing event on the buying side.

ERP Core Concepts

Sales Order

A sales order is the ERP document recording a customer's commitment to buy specific items at agreed prices and dates. It reserves or creates demand for supply, triggers picking and shipping, and later drives invoicing and revenue recognition.

ERP Core Concepts

Blanket Order

A blanket order is a long-term agreement covering a total quantity or value of items over a period, with individual deliveries called off through releases. It locks in price and commitment while letting actual shipment dates follow real demand.

ERP Core Concepts

Backorder

A backorder is the unfulfilled portion of a customer order that cannot ship because stock is unavailable, which the supplier agrees to deliver later. ERPs keep it open and allocate incoming supply to it as receipts or production complete.

ERP Core Concepts

Return Material Authorization (RMA)

A Return Material Authorization (RMA) is a document and number issued by a supplier approving a customer's return of goods. In ERP it controls receiving, inspection, disposition, and the credit, replacement or repair that follows.

ERP Core Concepts

Order-to-Cash (O2C)

Order-to-cash (O2C) is the end-to-end business process from receiving a customer order through fulfilment, invoicing and collecting payment. In ERP it spans sales, inventory, shipping, accounts receivable and the general ledger.

ERP Core Concepts

SAP MIGO (Goods Movement)

MIGO is the SAP transaction that posts goods movements in one screen: goods receipts against purchase orders, goods issues to production orders or cost centers, stock transfers and returns. Each posting creates a material document and an accounting document.

ERP Core Concepts

SAP ME21N (Create Purchase Order)

ME21N is the SAP MM transaction for creating a purchase order. A PO captures vendor, material, quantity, price, plant and delivery date, and becomes the reference for goods receipt (MIGO) and invoice verification (MIRO).

ERP Core Concepts

SAP VA01 (Create Sales Order)

VA01 is the SAP SD transaction that creates a sales order. The order is entered within a sales area, runs pricing and an availability check, and starts the document flow to delivery (VL01N) and billing (VF01).

ERP Core Concepts

SAP Material Master (MM01)

The SAP material master is the central record for every item a company buys, makes, stores or sells. It is created in MM01 and organized into views by function, such as MRP, purchasing, sales, accounting and quality.

ERP Core Concepts

SAP Fiori

SAP Fiori is SAP's role-based web user experience. It presents business tasks as apps in a launchpad, built on SAPUI5 and served by OData services, and is the default front end for S/4HANA alongside the classic SAP GUI.

ERP Core Concepts

SAP Movement Types

A SAP movement type is a three-digit code on a goods movement that tells the system what happened (receipt, issue, transfer, return) and so which stock quantities, stock types and general ledger accounts to update.

ERP Core Concepts

NetSuite Saved Search

A NetSuite saved search is a stored query over a record type, such as transactions or items, defined with criteria, result columns, filters and formulas. It powers lists, dashboard portlets, email alerts, mass updates and SuiteScript lookups.

ERP Core Concepts

NetSuite SuiteFlow

SuiteFlow is NetSuite's no-code workflow builder. It models a record's lifecycle as states, transitions and actions, with triggers and conditions, and is commonly used for approvals, notifications, field defaults and status changes on purchase orders, sales orders and work orders.

ERP Core Concepts

Dynamics 365 Business Central

Dynamics 365 Business Central is Microsoft's cloud ERP for small and mid-sized businesses, the successor to Dynamics NAV. It covers finance, sales, purchasing, inventory and light manufacturing, and is extended with AL code, Power Platform and standard OData and API v2.0 endpoints.

ERP Core Concepts

Dynamics 365 Financial Dimensions

Financial dimensions in Dynamics 365 are configurable analytical tags, such as department, cost center, business unit or project, attached to transactions alongside the main account. Account structures and rules control which combinations are valid, giving flexible reporting without a huge chart of accounts.

ERP Core Concepts

Epicor BAQ (Business Activity Query)

An Epicor BAQ (Business Activity Query) is a saved query built in Epicor's Query Builder over ERP tables. It feeds dashboards, SSRS and Crystal reports, BPM logic and the REST API (as BAQ services), and can be updatable in some cases.

ERP Core Concepts

Oracle EBS Concurrent Program

An Oracle E-Business Suite concurrent program is an executable batch process, such as a report, interface or data load, defined in the application and run by concurrent managers. Users submit it as a concurrent request with parameters and view status and output.

Manufacturing & Operations

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Manufacturing & Operations

OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness)

OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness) is a manufacturing metric that multiplies Availability, Performance, and Quality into a single percentage showing how much of scheduled production time an asset spends making good parts at its rated speed.

Manufacturing & Operations

Takt Time

Takt time is the rate at which a process must complete one unit to meet customer demand, calculated as available production time divided by demand for that period. It sets the pace a line must sustain, not the speed it can achieve.

Manufacturing & Operations

Cycle Time

Cycle time is the actual elapsed time a process takes to complete one unit, measured from the start of work on that unit to the start of work on the next. It describes what the process does, not what the customer requires.

Manufacturing & Operations

Throughput

Throughput, sometimes referred to as output rate, is expressed in units produced per hour (or per shift or week). It is the rate at which a process, line, or plant produces good, sellable units over a defined period. Only conforming output that can be sold counts toward throughput.

Manufacturing & Operations

WIP (Work in Process)

WIP (Work in Process) is inventory that has been released to production and has begun conversion but is not yet a finished good. It includes partially machined parts, subassemblies, and material sitting in queue between operations.

Manufacturing & Operations

Kanban

Kanban is a visual pull system in which a card, bin, or electronic signal authorizes production or replenishment of a specific part only after downstream consumption, capping inventory at the number of signals in circulation.

Manufacturing & Operations

Lean Manufacturing

Lean manufacturing is a production philosophy derived from the Toyota Production System that maximizes customer value by systematically identifying and eliminating waste, defined as any activity that consumes resources without adding value the customer would pay for.

Manufacturing & Operations

Six Sigma

Six Sigma is a data-driven improvement methodology that reduces process variation and defects using statistical analysis, targeting a capability level of 3.4 defects per million opportunities, typically executed through the five-phase DMAIC cycle.

Manufacturing & Operations

SPC (Statistical Process Control)

SPC (Statistical Process Control) is the use of control charts and statistical rules to monitor a process in real time, distinguishing normal common-cause variation from special-cause variation that signals a genuine change requiring action.

Manufacturing & Operations

Cp and Cpk

Cp and Cpk are process capability indices. Cp compares the specification width to the process spread, assuming perfect centering, while Cpk also accounts for how far the process mean has drifted from the center of the tolerance.

Manufacturing & Operations

FMEA (Failure Mode and Effects Analysis)

FMEA (Failure Mode and Effects Analysis) is a structured risk assessment that identifies how a product or process can fail, the effects and causes of each failure, and existing controls, then prioritizes actions to prevent the highest-risk failures.

Manufacturing & Operations

PPAP (Production Part Approval Process)

PPAP (Production Part Approval Process) is a standardized supplier approval package, originating in the automotive industry, that demonstrates a supplier's production process can consistently produce conforming parts at the quoted rate before shipments are authorized.

Manufacturing & Operations

First Pass Yield

First pass yield is the percentage of units that complete a process correctly the first time, without rework, repair, or retest. Units that eventually pass after rework are excluded, so the metric captures hidden factory loss.

Manufacturing & Operations

Scrap Rate

Scrap rate is the percentage of production output discarded as unusable because it cannot be economically reworked to specification, calculated as scrapped units divided by total units produced over a defined period.

Manufacturing & Operations

Rework

Rework is action taken on nonconforming product to bring it into full conformance with the original specification. It differs from repair, which makes product acceptable for use without meeting the original requirement.

Manufacturing & Operations

SMED (Single-Minute Exchange of Die)

SMED (Single-Minute Exchange of Die) is a structured method developed by Shigeo Shingo for reducing equipment changeover time to under ten minutes, primarily by converting setup steps that require the machine stopped into steps performed while it still runs.

Manufacturing & Operations

TPM (Total Productive Maintenance)

TPM (Total Productive Maintenance) is a company-wide approach to equipment reliability that shifts routine care to operators, builds structured planned maintenance, and targets the elimination of breakdowns, speed loss, and defects caused by equipment condition.

Manufacturing & Operations

MTBF (Mean Time Between Failures)

MTBF (Mean Time Between Failures) is the average operating time a repairable asset runs between consecutive failures, calculated as total operating time divided by the number of failures in that period. It measures reliability, not expected lifetime.

Manufacturing & Operations

MTTR (Mean Time To Repair)

MTTR (Mean Time To Repair) is the average time required to restore a failed asset to full operating condition, calculated as total repair time divided by the number of repairs. It measures maintainability rather than reliability.

Manufacturing & Operations

Andon

Andon is a visual and audible signaling system that lets any operator immediately alert supervisors and support staff to an abnormal condition, and in its full form authorizes stopping the line until the problem is addressed.

Manufacturing & Operations

Poka-Yoke

Poka-yoke is a mistake-proofing technique that designs a process or fixture so a human error either cannot occur at all or is detected immediately, before it becomes a defect passed to the next operation.

Manufacturing & Operations

Value Stream Mapping

Value stream mapping is a lean method that diagrams every material and information flow required to deliver a product family from order to delivery, quantifying processing time, waiting time, and inventory at each step to expose where lead time is consumed.

Manufacturing & Operations

Theory of Constraints

Theory of Constraints is a management methodology, developed by Eliyahu Goldratt, holding that every system is limited by a small number of constraints, and that overall performance improves only when effort is focused on the constraint.

Manufacturing & Operations

Traceability

Traceability is the ability to follow the history, location, and application of a part or material through the supply chain and production process, both backward to its sources and forward to every product and customer it reached.

Manufacturing & Operations

Bottleneck

A bottleneck is the resource in a process whose available capacity is less than the demand placed on it, making it the step that limits total system output. Every other resource can only run as fast as the bottleneck permits.

Manufacturing & Operations

Planned Order

A planned order is a system-generated supply proposal that MRP creates to cover a net requirement. It has a quantity and dates but is not yet a committed job, production order or purchase order, and MRP can delete or reschedule it on every run.

Manufacturing & Operations

Firm Planned Order

A firm planned order (FPO) is a planned order that a planner has frozen so MRP will not delete, resize or reschedule it. It still counts as supply in netting, and it stays a planned order rather than becoming a released production or purchase order.

Manufacturing & Operations

Planning Time Fence

A planning time fence is a number of days from today inside which MRP will not automatically create or change planned supply. Changes in that window need planner approval, which keeps near-term production stable while the outer horizon remains flexible.

Manufacturing & Operations

Gross-to-Net Requirements

Gross-to-net is the core MRP calculation. It takes gross requirements for an item in each time bucket, subtracts projected on-hand inventory and scheduled receipts, adds safety stock, and leaves the net requirement that must be covered by new planned orders.

Manufacturing & Operations

Pegging

Pegging links each supply order in MRP to the demand that created it, such as a sales order, forecast or parent job. It lets planners trace a component shortage up to the affected customer order and understand why an order exists.

Manufacturing & Operations

BOM Explosion

BOM explosion is the step in which MRP expands each parent item's planned quantity into dependent component requirements using the bill of materials, quantity-per factors, scrap and yield allowances, and effectivity dates, level by level.

Manufacturing & Operations

Low-Level Code

A low-level code is the lowest (deepest) level at which an item appears in any bill of materials. MRP uses it to decide planning order, so each item is netted only after all demand from every parent has been calculated.

Manufacturing & Operations

MRP Action Messages

MRP action messages are exception prompts generated by the planning run, telling planners to release, reschedule in, reschedule out, change quantity or cancel existing orders so supply matches current demand.

Manufacturing & Operations

Rough-Cut Capacity Planning

Rough-cut capacity planning (RCCP) is a high-level check that the master production schedule can be met by critical resources such as bottleneck work centers, using bills of resources or routing profiles, before detailed MRP and capacity planning run.

Manufacturing & Operations

Net Change MRP

Net change MRP recalculates plans only for items affected by changes since the last run, such as new orders, receipts or BOM edits. Regenerative MRP discards and rebuilds the entire plan, which is slower but resets any accumulated drift.

Manufacturing & Operations

Job Costing

Job costing accumulates material, labor, subcontract and overhead costs against a specific job or work order, so each order has its own actual cost and margin. It suits make-to-order and engineer-to-order shops where every job differs.

Manufacturing & Operations

Overhead Absorption (Applied Overhead)

Overhead absorption is the process of charging indirect manufacturing costs, such as factory rent, utilities and supervision, to products or jobs using a predetermined rate based on labor hours, machine hours or another base.

Manufacturing & Operations

Material Usage Variance

Material usage variance is the difference between the actual quantity of material consumed on a production order and the standard quantity allowed for the output produced, multiplied by the standard price. It shows scrap, waste and yield losses.

Manufacturing & Operations

Non-Conformance Report (NCR)

A non-conformance report (NCR) is the formal record that a part, material, process or document failed a specified requirement. It captures what failed, how many, where, and the disposition decision (use as is, rework, repair, scrap or return to supplier).

Manufacturing & Operations

Root Cause Analysis and the 8D Report

Root cause analysis finds the underlying reason a defect occurred, not just the symptom. The 8D report (eight disciplines) is the structured format automotive and aerospace customers use to document team, containment, root cause, corrective action and prevention.

Manufacturing & Operations

Gage R&R (Measurement System Analysis)

Gage R&R is a measurement system analysis study that splits observed variation into repeatability (same operator, same gage), reproducibility (different operators) and true part variation, showing whether the gage is good enough to judge the product.

Manufacturing & Operations

Control Plan

A control plan is a document listing, for each process step, the characteristics to control, the specification, how it is measured, sample size and frequency, the control method and the reaction plan when results go out of limits.

Manufacturing & Operations

AQL and Acceptance Sampling

Acceptance sampling inspects a random sample from a lot and accepts or rejects the whole lot based on the number of defects found. AQL (acceptance quality limit) is the worst defect rate considered acceptable as a process average in that plan.

Manufacturing & Operations

Material Review Board (MRB)

A material review board (MRB) is a cross-functional group, usually quality, engineering and purchasing or manufacturing, that reviews nonconforming material and decides its disposition: use as is, rework, repair, scrap or return to supplier.

Manufacturing & Operations

Cost of Poor Quality (COPQ)

Cost of poor quality (COPQ) is the total cost caused by products or services not being right the first time: internal failure (scrap, rework), external failure (returns, warranty, recalls), and often appraisal and prevention spend in the full cost of quality model.

Manufacturing & Operations

Incoming Inspection (Receiving Inspection)

Incoming inspection, also called receiving inspection or IQC, verifies purchased material against the purchase order, drawing and specification before it is released to stock or production. Checks include documents, count, visual, dimensional and sometimes lab testing.

Manufacturing & Operations

5S (Sort, Set in Order, Shine, Standardize, Sustain)

5S is a lean workplace organization method with five steps: Sort, Set in order, Shine, Standardize and Sustain. It removes clutter, gives every tool and material a defined place, and makes abnormal conditions visible so waste and errors are caught early.

Manufacturing & Operations

Kaizen (Continuous Improvement)

Kaizen is the Japanese term for continuous improvement: a habit of making many small, frequent changes to processes, led by the people who do the work, rather than relying on occasional large projects or one-off redesigns.

Manufacturing & Operations

Gemba Walk

A gemba walk is a structured visit by managers to the place where work is actually done, such as the shop floor, to observe processes, ask questions and see problems first hand instead of relying on reports or dashboards.

Manufacturing & Operations

Seven Wastes (Muda)

The seven wastes, or muda, are the non-value-adding activities lean seeks to remove: transportation, inventory, motion, waiting, overproduction, overprocessing and defects. A common mnemonic is TIMWOOD. Many teams add unused talent as an eighth.

Manufacturing & Operations

PDCA Cycle (Plan-Do-Check-Act)

The PDCA cycle is a four-step improvement loop: Plan a change, Do it on a small scale, Check the results against the plan, and Act to standardize the change or adjust and repeat. It is also called the Deming or Shewhart cycle.

Manufacturing & Operations

DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control)

DMAIC is the five-phase Six Sigma method for improving an existing process: Define the problem, Measure current performance, Analyze root causes, Improve with verified solutions, and Control the gains so they last.

Manufacturing & Operations

5 Whys (Root Cause Analysis)

The 5 Whys is a root cause analysis technique that asks why a problem happened, then asks why again of each answer, typically about five times, until a cause is reached that can be fixed and prevented from recurring.

Manufacturing & Operations

Heijunka (Production Leveling)

Heijunka is a lean technique that levels production by smoothing both volume and product mix over time, so the plant builds a steady, repeating pattern instead of reacting to order spikes with large batches and overtime.

Manufacturing & Operations

Jidoka (Autonomation)

Jidoka, or autonomation, is a lean principle where a machine or operator detects an abnormality and stops the process automatically, so defects are not passed downstream and the problem is fixed at its source.

Manufacturing & Operations

Standard Work

Standard work is the documented, current best-known way to perform a task, specifying the work sequence, the time for each step (takt and cycle time) and the standard stock on hand, serving as the baseline for improvement.

Manufacturing & Operations

CMMS (Computerized Maintenance Management System)

A CMMS (Computerized Maintenance Management System) is software that records equipment, schedules preventive maintenance, issues and tracks maintenance work orders, and manages spare parts, so a maintenance team can plan work and keep a history of every repair.

Manufacturing & Operations

EAM (Enterprise Asset Management)

Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) is software and practice for managing physical assets across their whole lifecycle, from acquisition and commissioning through maintenance, cost tracking and disposal, usually across multiple plants or sites.

Manufacturing & Operations

Preventive Maintenance (PM)

Preventive maintenance (PM) is planned servicing of equipment at set time or usage intervals, such as lubrication, inspection or part replacement, performed before a failure occurs to reduce unplanned downtime and extend asset life.

Manufacturing & Operations

Predictive Maintenance (PdM)

Predictive maintenance (PdM) uses sensor readings, operating data and failure history to estimate when equipment is likely to fail, so repairs are scheduled shortly before that point rather than on a fixed calendar or after a breakdown.

Manufacturing & Operations

Condition-Based Maintenance (CBM)

Condition-based maintenance (CBM) triggers maintenance when a measured indicator of equipment health, such as vibration, temperature or oil contamination, crosses a defined limit, instead of on a fixed calendar or run-hour schedule.

Manufacturing & Operations

Reliability-Centered Maintenance (RCM)

Reliability-centered maintenance (RCM) is a structured analysis that determines, for each asset function and failure mode, the most effective maintenance strategy, such as preventive, condition-based, redesign or run-to-failure, based on consequence and failure behavior.

Manufacturing & Operations

MRO Inventory (Maintenance, Repair and Operations)

MRO inventory is the stock of spare parts, consumables and supplies used to maintain and repair equipment and facilities, as opposed to raw materials and components that become part of a finished product.

Manufacturing & Operations

Asset Criticality Analysis

Asset criticality analysis ranks equipment by the consequence of its failure, scoring factors such as safety, production loss, quality, environmental impact and repair cost, so maintenance effort, monitoring and spares are focused on the assets that matter most.

Manufacturing & Operations

Wrench Time

Wrench time is the proportion of a maintenance technician's paid time spent doing hands-on work on equipment, excluding travel, waiting for parts, permits, instructions or tools, and is a common measure of maintenance productivity.

Manufacturing & Operations

Maintenance Backlog

Maintenance backlog is the total of approved, planned maintenance work not yet completed, usually expressed in weeks by dividing the estimated labor hours of open work orders by the weekly labor hours available.

Manufacturing & Operations

Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI)

Vendor managed inventory (VMI) is an arrangement where the supplier monitors the buyer's stock of their products and decides when and how much to replenish, within agreed minimum and maximum levels. Ownership may transfer on delivery or on use.

Manufacturing & Operations

Supplier Scorecard

A supplier scorecard is a periodic rating of a vendor against agreed measures such as on-time delivery, quality acceptance, price performance and responsiveness. It turns receipt and quality data into a score used for sourcing and corrective action.

Manufacturing & Operations

Outside Processing (Subcontracting)

Outside processing, or subcontracting, is when a routing operation such as plating, heat treat or machining is performed by an outside vendor. The ERP raises a purchase order for the service and tracks the parts sent out and returned.

Manufacturing & Operations

Manufacturing Execution System (MES)

A Manufacturing Execution System (MES) is software that tracks, controls and documents production on the shop floor in real time, from releasing a work order to recording what was actually made, by whom, on which machine and with which materials.

Manufacturing & Operations

ISA-95 (IEC 62264)

ISA-95 (also IEC 62264) is the international standard that defines how enterprise systems such as ERP exchange information with manufacturing operations systems such as MES and plant control systems, using common models for equipment, material, personnel and activities.

Manufacturing & Operations

Shop Floor Data Collection (SFDC)

Shop floor data collection (SFDC) is the capture of actual production data, such as operator labor time, quantities completed, scrap, machine run time and material usage, directly from the factory floor into the ERP or MES, ideally at the moment work happens.

Manufacturing & Operations

Finite Capacity Scheduling

Finite capacity scheduling sequences production operations against the actual available hours, machines, tooling and labor of each resource, so that no work center is loaded beyond what it can physically produce, unlike MRP which assumes infinite capacity.

Manufacturing & Operations

Dispatch List

A dispatch list is a prioritized list of the operations waiting at a work center or machine, in the order they should be run, generated from the schedule and updated as jobs arrive, finish or change priority.

Manufacturing & Operations

Electronic Work Instructions

Electronic work instructions are digital, step-by-step process instructions shown to operators on terminals or tablets at the point of work, controlled by revision and linked to the specific job, part and operation instead of printed paper.

Manufacturing & Operations

Downtime Tracking

Downtime tracking is the systematic recording of when a machine or line stops, for how long and for what reason, so that planned and unplanned stoppages can be measured, categorized and reduced.

Manufacturing & Operations

Product Genealogy

Product genealogy is the recorded family tree of a finished product: which component lots and serial numbers went into it, which operations, machines, people and process settings built it, and which customers received it.

Manufacturing & Operations

Labor Reporting

Labor reporting is the recording of the hours each employee spends on specific jobs, operations or indirect activities, so that the ERP can calculate actual job cost, labor efficiency and payroll distribution.

Manufacturing & Operations

Engineering Change Order (ECO)

An engineering change order (ECO) is the formal, approved document that authorizes a change to a part, bill of materials, drawing or routing, defines when it takes effect, and says what happens to existing stock and open orders.

Manufacturing & Operations

EBOM vs MBOM (Engineering BOM vs Manufacturing BOM)

The engineering BOM (EBOM) lists parts as the designer structured the product. The manufacturing BOM (MBOM) restructures that list to match how it is built: assemblies, consumables, packaging, phantom levels and the plant where it is made.

Manufacturing & Operations

Multi-Level BOM

A multi-level BOM lists a finished product and each of its sub-assemblies and components in nested levels, so you can see the full structure from the end item down to raw material, rather than only the immediate children.

Manufacturing & Operations

Where-Used Analysis

Where-used analysis starts from a component or raw material and lists every parent assembly and finished product whose BOM includes it, at any level, so you can see what a change or shortage will affect.

Manufacturing & Operations

PLM (Product Lifecycle Management)

Product lifecycle management (PLM) is software that manages product definition data from concept through design, release and retirement: CAD models, engineering BOMs, documents, revisions and change approvals, then hands released data to ERP for production.

Manufacturing & Operations

Item Revision

An item revision is a label, such as A, B or 02, that identifies a specific released version of a part or assembly, so that drawings, BOMs, inventory and orders can all reference exactly which version they mean.

Manufacturing & Operations

Configurable BOM

A configurable BOM is a bill of materials generated or adjusted from the options a customer selects, so that one product family with many possible variants does not need a separate stored BOM for every combination.

Manufacturing & Operations

Alternate Routing

An alternate routing is a second approved way to make the same item, using different operations, work centers or run rates, which planners or scheduling logic can select when the primary routing is overloaded or unavailable.

Manufacturing & Operations

Cost Rollup

A cost rollup is the ERP process that calculates the standard cost of each manufactured item by summing component costs from its BOM with labor, overhead and outside processing from its routing, working from the lowest level up.

Manufacturing & Operations

Surface Mount Technology (SMT)

Surface Mount Technology (SMT) is the method of placing and soldering electronic components directly onto the surface of a printed circuit board, instead of inserting leads through holes. It is the dominant way modern electronics are assembled.

Manufacturing & Operations

PCBA (Printed Circuit Board Assembly)

PCBA is a printed circuit board assembly: the bare board plus all electronic components soldered onto it. A PCB is only the fabricated board with copper traces; it becomes a PCBA once it is populated, soldered and usually tested.

Manufacturing & Operations

EMS (Electronics Manufacturing Services)

Electronics Manufacturing Services (EMS) is the industry of companies that build electronics for other brands (OEMs) under contract, covering PCB assembly, box build, test and often procurement and logistics. Also called contract electronics manufacturing.

Manufacturing & Operations

Reflow Soldering

Reflow soldering is the process that melts pre-applied solder paste in a controlled-temperature oven so surface-mount components bond to the board pads. The time and temperature curve is called the reflow profile.

Manufacturing & Operations

Automated Optical Inspection (AOI)

Automated Optical Inspection (AOI) uses cameras and image-processing software to inspect printed circuit board assemblies for defects such as missing, misaligned or wrong components and poor solder joints, without a human checking each board.

Manufacturing & Operations

Moisture Sensitivity Level (MSL)

Moisture Sensitivity Level (MSL) is a rating, defined in the J-STD-020 and J-STD-033 standards, that states how long a surface-mount component can be exposed to factory air before it must be baked, to avoid cracking during reflow.

Manufacturing & Operations

Reference Designator

A reference designator is the unique label for a component position on a printed circuit board, such as R12 for a resistor, C7 for a capacitor or U3 for an integrated circuit. It links the schematic, BOM and assembly machine placement data.

Manufacturing & Operations

Approved Manufacturer List (AML)

An Approved Manufacturer List (AML) lists the specific manufacturer and manufacturer part numbers (MPNs) that engineering has approved to satisfy a single internal component part number. It lets purchasing buy alternates without a BOM change.

Manufacturing & Operations

Component Obsolescence

Component obsolescence is when a manufacturer discontinues an electronic part, so it can no longer be bought from normal channels. Managing it means detecting end-of-life notices early and choosing a last-time buy, substitute or redesign.

Manufacturing & Operations

Foreign Object Debris (FOD)

Foreign object debris (FOD) is any object, material or substance in the wrong place that can damage an aircraft or component or injure people. FOD prevention programs control tools, hardware, cleanliness and work areas throughout manufacturing and maintenance.

Manufacturing & Operations

Key Characteristics (AS9103)

Key characteristics are the features of a material, part or process whose variation has a significant influence on product fit, form, function, performance, service life or manufacturability, and which therefore get special control under AS9103 variation management.

Manufacturing & Operations

OTIF (On-Time In-Full)

OTIF (On-Time In-Full) is the percentage of order lines or orders delivered on the agreed date and in the complete ordered quantity. A line that is late or short counts as a miss, so OTIF is stricter than on-time delivery alone.

Manufacturing & Operations

Fill Rate

Fill rate is the percentage of customer demand, measured in units, lines or orders, that is met immediately from available stock without backorder or delay. It measures how much of what customers asked for was actually shipped when requested.

Manufacturing & Operations

Forecast Accuracy (MAPE and Bias)

Forecast accuracy measures how close a demand forecast is to actual demand, commonly expressed through MAPE (mean absolute percentage error), WMAPE (weighted MAPE) and bias. Lower error and bias mean planning can rely on the forecast.

Manufacturing & Operations

Capacity Utilization

Capacity utilization is the share of available capacity, in hours or output, that is actually used over a period. It equals actual load divided by available capacity and shows how fully a work center, line or plant is being used.

Manufacturing & Operations

Schedule Adherence

Schedule adherence is the percentage of planned production, by item, quantity and time window, that is actually completed as scheduled. It shows how reliably the shop floor executes the plan produced by MRP and finite scheduling.

Manufacturing & Operations

Warehouse Management System (WMS)

A warehouse management system (WMS) is software that directs and records warehouse work at bin level: receiving, put-away, replenishment, picking, packing and shipping. It tells operators where to go and what to scan, and posts the resulting stock movements to the ERP.

Manufacturing & Operations

Cross-Docking

Cross-docking is a logistics practice where inbound goods are moved directly to outbound shipping with little or no storage in between. It cuts handling and holding cost but needs accurate inbound timing and known demand.

Manufacturing & Operations

Put-Away

Put-away is the warehouse step that moves received goods from the receiving dock to a storage location and records that location in the system. Directed put-away uses rules to choose the best bin.

Manufacturing & Operations

Wave Picking

Wave picking is a method where a warehouse releases orders to the floor in timed groups, called waves, chosen by carrier cut-off, priority, zone or order type. It lets planners balance workload across pickers and the dock.

Manufacturing & Operations

Engineer-to-Order (ETO)

Engineer-to-order (ETO) is a manufacturing strategy where each product is designed and engineered to a specific customer's requirements after the order is received. Design, BOM and routing are created per project rather than reused from a catalog.

Manufacturing & Operations

Make-to-Order (MTO)

Make-to-order (MTO) is a production strategy where a product is manufactured only after a confirmed customer order, using existing designs and routings. It avoids finished goods inventory but gives the customer a lead time equal to procurement plus production time.

Manufacturing & Operations

SAP CO01 (Create Production Order)

CO01 creates a production order in SAP PP for a material, quantity and dates. The order copies the BOM and routing, reserves components, collects costs, and moves through release, confirmation, goods receipt, technical completion and settlement.

Manufacturing & Operations

SAP MD04 (Stock/Requirements List)

MD04 is the SAP Stock/Requirements List, a live view of a material's current stock, all supply and demand elements by date, and the projected available quantity. Planners use it to see why MRP created or suggested an order.

Manufacturing & Operations

NetSuite Advanced Manufacturing

NetSuite Advanced Manufacturing is the NetSuite feature set that adds routings, manufacturing work centers, operation-level work orders, finite scheduling, BOM and routing revisions, and WIP tracking, beyond basic assembly items with simple bills of materials.

On-Prem AI

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On-Prem AI

On-Prem AI

On-prem AI is the practice of running artificial intelligence models on hardware you own and control, inside your own data center or plant, so prompts, documents, and model weights never leave your network.

On-Prem AI

LLM (Large Language Model)

An LLM (Large Language Model) is a neural network with billions of parameters trained on huge volumes of text to predict the next token in a sequence, which gives it broad language understanding, reasoning, and generation ability.

On-Prem AI

SLM (Small Language Model)

An SLM (Small Language Model) is a compact language model, typically between about 1 and 15 billion parameters, designed to run on a single modest GPU or even a CPU while still handling focused enterprise tasks well.

On-Prem AI

RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation)

RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) is an architecture that searches your own document store for passages relevant to a question, inserts them into the LLM prompt, and instructs the model to answer only from that retrieved evidence.

On-Prem AI

Vector Database

A vector database is a system that stores high-dimensional embedding vectors and retrieves the ones most similar to a query vector, enabling semantic search where results match meaning rather than exact keywords.

On-Prem AI

Embedding

An embedding is a list of numbers, typically several hundred to a few thousand dimensions, that represents the meaning of a piece of text, image, or code so that semantically similar items produce vectors that sit close together.

On-Prem AI

Fine-Tuning

Fine-tuning is the process of continuing to train an already pretrained model on a smaller set of your own examples, adjusting its weights so it reliably produces the formats, vocabulary, and behavior your task requires.

On-Prem AI

LoRA (Low-Rank Adaptation)

LoRA (Low-Rank Adaptation) is a fine-tuning method that freezes a model's original weights and trains small low-rank matrices injected alongside them, achieving most of the benefit of full fine-tuning at a small fraction of the memory cost.

On-Prem AI

Quantization

Quantization is the technique of storing a model's weights at lower numeric precision, for example 8-bit or 4-bit integers instead of 16-bit floats, which sharply reduces GPU memory use and often increases speed at a modest accuracy cost.

On-Prem AI

Inference

Inference is the phase in which a trained model is run to produce output from new input, as opposed to training, where the model's weights are being learned. In production, inference is where essentially all AI compute cost is spent.

On-Prem AI

Token

A token is the basic unit of text a language model processes, usually a word fragment rather than a whole word. In English, one token averages roughly four characters, so about 100 tokens covers 75 words.

On-Prem AI

Context Window

A context window is the maximum number of tokens a language model can hold in view at one time, covering the system instructions, conversation history, retrieved documents, and the generated response combined.

On-Prem AI

GPU VRAM

GPU VRAM is the high-bandwidth memory physically attached to a graphics processor. For AI serving it must simultaneously hold the model weights, the key-value cache for every active request, and activation buffers, which makes it the binding constraint on most deployments.

On-Prem AI

Tensor Parallelism

Tensor parallelism is a technique that splits the weight matrices inside each model layer across several GPUs, so every card holds a slice and computes part of each operation, letting a model run that no single GPU could hold.

On-Prem AI

vLLM

vLLM is an open-source inference server for large language models that uses PagedAttention memory management and continuous batching to serve many concurrent users at high throughput, exposing an OpenAI-compatible HTTP API.

On-Prem AI

Air-Gapped AI

Air-gapped AI is the deployment of AI models on a network that has no physical or logical connection to the internet or to any less-trusted network, so all model files, dependencies, and data must be transferred through a controlled process.

On-Prem AI

Open-Weight Model

An open-weight model is one whose trained parameter files are published for download, so anyone can run it on their own hardware, inspect it, quantize it, and fine-tune it, subject to whatever license the publisher attaches.

On-Prem AI

Model Weights

Model weights are the numeric parameters inside a neural network, learned during training, that determine how input is transformed into output. They are the model: distributed as files, they encode everything the system has learned.

On-Prem AI

Hallucination

A hallucination is output from an AI model that is fluent and confident but factually wrong or entirely fabricated, produced because language models generate statistically plausible text rather than retrieving verified facts.

On-Prem AI

AI Guardrails

AI guardrails are the technical and policy controls placed around an AI system that constrain what it may receive as input, what it may produce as output, and what actions it is permitted to take, independent of what the model itself decides.

On-Prem AI

Prompt Injection

Prompt injection is an attack in which instructions are hidden inside content an AI system reads, causing the model to follow the attacker's directions instead of the operator's, because a language model cannot reliably separate instructions from data.

On-Prem AI

AI Agent

An AI agent is a system that wraps a language model with tools, memory, and a goal so it can plan a sequence of steps, call external systems, observe the results, and iterate until the objective is met or a limit is reached.

On-Prem AI

MCP (Model Context Protocol)

MCP (Model Context Protocol) is an open standard that defines how AI applications connect to external tools and data sources, so any compliant client can use any compliant server without custom integration code for each pair.

On-Prem AI

Sovereign AI

Sovereign AI is the principle that a nation or organization should retain legal and physical control over the AI models, data, and computing infrastructure it depends on, rather than relying on systems governed by another jurisdiction.

On-Prem AI

Model Distillation

Model distillation is a training technique in which a small student model learns to reproduce the behavior of a larger teacher model, retaining most of the teacher's quality on a target task at a fraction of the size and serving cost.

On-Prem AI

Text-to-SQL

Text-to-SQL is the technique of using a large language model to translate a plain-English question into a SQL query, run it against a database, and return the result. On ERP data it needs schema context, read-only access and query validation to be trustworthy.

On-Prem AI

Function Calling (Tool Calling)

Function calling, also called tool calling, is a capability where an LLM outputs a structured request to run a named function with specific arguments, such as get_order_status(order_id). Your software executes it and returns the result to the model.

On-Prem AI

Chunking

Chunking is the step in a RAG pipeline that splits long documents into smaller passages, usually a few hundred tokens each, so each can be embedded, indexed and retrieved on its own. Chunk boundaries strongly affect answer quality.

On-Prem AI

Reranking

Reranking is a second retrieval stage in RAG where a more precise model re-scores the top candidate passages from the first search and reorders them, so the LLM receives only the most relevant context.

On-Prem AI

Semantic Search

Semantic search retrieves results by meaning rather than exact word match, using embeddings to find text that is conceptually close to the query. A search for "supplier delivered damaged goods" can find records that say "vendor shipment arrived broken".

On-Prem AI

Human-in-the-Loop (HITL)

Human-in-the-loop (HITL) is a design where an AI system proposes an action, such as creating a purchase order, and a person reviews and approves it before it executes. It keeps accountability with people while automating the preparation work.

On-Prem AI

Multi-Agent System

A multi-agent system uses several specialised AI agents, each with its own instructions and tools, coordinated by an orchestrator to complete a larger task. For example, separate agents for inventory, suppliers and finance feed one recommendation.

On-Prem AI

Knowledge Graph

A knowledge graph stores things (parts, suppliers, lots, machines, documents) as nodes and their relationships as edges. In AI it lets a system answer multi-hop questions, such as which customers received parts from a bad lot, that plain text retrieval handles poorly.

On-Prem AI

AI Copilot (ERP Copilot)

An ERP AI copilot is a conversational assistant built into or alongside an ERP that answers questions in plain language, summarises records and drafts actions for a user to approve. It assists the user and does not run the business on its own.

Compliance & Standards

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Compliance & Standards

CMMC (Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification)

CMMC (Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification) is the US Department of Defense program that verifies defense contractors implement required cybersecurity controls before contract award, using three levels of assessment tied to the sensitivity of the information they handle.

Compliance & Standards

ITAR

ITAR (International Traffic in Arms Regulations) is the US State Department regulation, at 22 CFR Parts 120-130, that controls the export of defense articles, defense services, and related technical data listed on the United States Munitions List.

Compliance & Standards

EAR (Export Administration Regulations)

EAR (Export Administration Regulations) is the US Commerce Department regulation, at 15 CFR Parts 730-774, that controls the export, reexport, and transfer of dual-use commercial items, software, and technology through the Commerce Control List.

Compliance & Standards

DFARS 252.204-7012

DFARS 252.204-7012 is the Defense Department contract clause requiring contractors to protect covered defense information by implementing NIST SP 800-171, to report cyber incidents to DoD within 72 hours, and to flow the same obligations down to subcontractors.

Compliance & Standards

NIST SP 800-171

NIST SP 800-171 is the National Institute of Standards and Technology publication that defines the security requirements for protecting Controlled Unclassified Information in nonfederal systems, and it is the technical baseline behind DFARS 252.204-7012 and CMMC Level 2.

Compliance & Standards

CUI (Controlled Unclassified Information)

CUI (Controlled Unclassified Information) is unclassified information created or possessed by the US government, or by a contractor on its behalf, that laws, regulations, or government-wide policy require to be safeguarded or restricted in dissemination.

Compliance & Standards

FedRAMP

FedRAMP (Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program) is the US government program that standardizes security assessment, authorization, and continuous monitoring for cloud services, allowing one rigorous authorization to be reused across federal agencies.

Compliance & Standards

AS9100

AS9100 is the quality management system standard for the aviation, space, and defense industry, published by SAE and the International Aerospace Quality Group, which incorporates all of ISO 9001 and adds sector-specific requirements for safety, configuration, and risk.

Compliance & Standards

AS9102 First Article Inspection

AS9102 First Article Inspection is the aerospace requirement to verify that a production process reliably produces conforming parts by fully inspecting and documenting a representative first article against every drawing and specification characteristic.

Compliance & Standards

AS5553 (Counterfeit Parts)

AS5553 is the SAE standard defining requirements for avoiding, detecting, mitigating, and disposing of counterfeit electrical, electronic, and electromechanical parts, used by aerospace and defense organizations to build a documented counterfeit parts control plan.

Compliance & Standards

ISO 9001

ISO 9001 is the international standard specifying requirements for a quality management system, enabling an organization to consistently provide products and services that meet customer and regulatory requirements and to improve through a process-based, risk-aware approach.

Compliance & Standards

IATF 16949

IATF 16949 is the automotive industry quality management system standard, published by the International Automotive Task Force, that supplements ISO 9001 with automotive-specific requirements and must be implemented together with ISO 9001 rather than on its own.

Compliance & Standards

ISO 13485

ISO 13485 is the international quality management system standard for organizations involved in the design, production, installation, or servicing of medical devices, emphasizing regulatory compliance, risk management, and documented traceability throughout the product lifecycle.

Compliance & Standards

FDA 21 CFR Part 11

FDA 21 CFR Part 11 is the US regulation that defines the criteria under which the FDA accepts electronic records and electronic signatures as equivalent to paper records and handwritten signatures, requiring validation, audit trails, access controls, and signature integrity.

Compliance & Standards

FSMA Rule 204

FSMA Rule 204 is the FDA Food Traceability Rule requiring companies that handle foods on the Food Traceability List to capture defined key data elements at critical tracking events and produce those records to FDA in a sortable electronic format within 24 hours.

Compliance & Standards

SOX (Sarbanes-Oxley) Compliance

SOX compliance is a US public company's obligation under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 to establish, document, test, and certify internal control over financial reporting, including the IT general controls and segregation of duties in the systems that produce financial data.

Compliance & Standards

EDI (Electronic Data Interchange)

EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) is the computer-to-computer exchange of business documents such as purchase orders, invoices, and shipping notices between trading partners in a standardized structured format, without human intervention.

Compliance & Standards

EDI 850 Purchase Order

The EDI 850 is the ANSI X12 transaction set used to transmit a purchase order electronically from a buyer to a supplier, carrying header terms, ship-to and bill-to parties, and line item details such as quantity, price, and product identifiers.

Compliance & Standards

API (Application Programming Interface)

An API (Application Programming Interface) is a defined contract that lets one software system request data or trigger functions in another, specifying the available operations, the structure of requests and responses, and the rules for authentication and error handling.

Compliance & Standards

REST API

A REST API is a web interface that exposes application data as addressable resources over HTTP, using standard verbs such as GET, POST, PUT, PATCH, and DELETE, stateless requests, and conventional status codes, typically exchanging JSON.

Compliance & Standards

SOAP

SOAP is an XML-based messaging protocol for exchanging structured information between systems, in which each message is an envelope containing an optional header and a body, and the available operations are formally described by a WSDL contract.

Compliance & Standards

Webhook

A webhook is an HTTP callback in which a source system automatically sends an HTTP request to a subscriber-provided URL when a defined event occurs, pushing notification to the consumer instead of requiring the consumer to poll for changes.

Compliance & Standards

Middleware

Middleware is software that sits between applications and handles the communication, transformation, routing, and reliability concerns of moving data between them, so that the applications themselves do not need to know about each other directly.

Compliance & Standards

iPaaS

iPaaS (Integration Platform as a Service) is a cloud-hosted platform that provides prebuilt connectors, data mapping, orchestration, and monitoring so organizations can build and operate integrations between applications without running their own integration infrastructure.

Compliance & Standards

Data Mapping

Data mapping is the process of defining how each field in a source system corresponds to a field in a target system, including the transformation rules, value translations, default values, and conditional logic needed to move data correctly between them.

Compliance & Standards

CAPA (Corrective and Preventive Action)

CAPA is a closed-loop quality process: investigate a problem, find its root cause, implement corrective action to remove it and preventive action to stop similar problems, then verify the actions were effective. Required by ISO 13485 and FDA rules, expected under AS9100.

Compliance & Standards

Certificate of Conformance (CoC)

A certificate of conformance (CoC) is a document from the manufacturer or supplier, signed by an authorised person, stating that delivered goods or services meet the purchase order, drawing and specification requirements, with traceable lot or serial references.

Compliance & Standards

Approved Vendor List (AVL)

An approved vendor list (AVL) is a controlled record of suppliers qualified to provide specific items, services or processes. Buyers may order only from listed sources, and changes require quality approval.

Compliance & Standards

Electronic Batch Record (EBR)

An electronic batch record (EBR) is the digital document that captures every step, material, measurement, check, signature and deviation involved in producing one batch, replacing the paper batch record used in regulated process manufacturing.

Compliance & Standards

IPC-A-610

IPC-A-610 is the widely used industry standard, published by IPC, that sets visual acceptance criteria for soldered electronic assemblies. It defines target, acceptable and defect conditions across three product classes based on end-use reliability.

Compliance & Standards

Configuration Management (Aerospace)

Configuration management is the discipline of identifying a product's configuration, controlling changes to it, and proving that what was built matches what was approved. In aerospace it is required by AS9100 clause 8.1.2 and typically follows EIA-649.

Compliance & Standards

Nadcap

Nadcap is the National Aerospace and Defense Contractors Accreditation Program, run by the Performance Review Institute (PRI), that audits and accredits suppliers of special processes such as heat treating, non-destructive testing, welding, chemical processing and coatings.

Compliance & Standards

CAGE Code

A CAGE code is a five-character identifier assigned to entities that do business with the US federal government and defense primes. It is issued by the Defense Logistics Agency, usually through SAM.gov registration, and identifies a specific facility.

Compliance & Standards

DPAS Rated Orders (DO and DX)

A DPAS rated order is a government or prime contract order marked DO or DX under the Defense Priorities and Allocations System (15 CFR Part 700), which legally requires suppliers to accept and prioritise it ahead of unrated commercial work.

Compliance & Standards

Technical Data Package (TDP)

A technical data package (TDP) is the controlled set of drawings, models, specifications, standards, quality requirements and related documents that fully defines a product so it can be manufactured, inspected and accepted.

Compliance & Standards

Deemed Export

A deemed export is the release or transfer of export-controlled technology or source code to a foreign person located in the United States. It is treated as an export to that person's home country and may require a license or other authorisation.

Compliance & Standards

FDA QMSR (Quality Management System Regulation)

The FDA Quality Management System Regulation (QMSR) is the amended 21 CFR Part 820 that replaced the old Quality System Regulation. It incorporates ISO 13485:2016 by reference and took effect on February 2, 2026 for medical device manufacturers.

Compliance & Standards

REACH Regulation

REACH (Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals) is EU Regulation EC 1907/2006. It requires companies to register chemical substances, communicate hazards down the supply chain and disclose Substances of Very High Concern (SVHC) in articles above 0.1% by weight.

Compliance & Standards

RoHS (Restriction of Hazardous Substances)

RoHS is the EU Directive 2011/65/EU restricting hazardous substances in electrical and electronic equipment. It limits lead, mercury, cadmium, hexavalent chromium, PBB, PBDE and four phthalates to set concentration limits per homogeneous material.

Compliance & Standards

ISO 14001

ISO 14001 is the international standard for an environmental management system (EMS). Organizations use it to identify environmental aspects, meet legal obligations, set objectives and improve performance. The current edition is ISO 14001:2015, and certification is by third-party audit.

Compliance & Standards

ISO 45001

ISO 45001 is the international standard for occupational health and safety (OH&S) management systems. Published in 2018, it replaced OHSAS 18001 and requires organizations to identify hazards, control risks, involve workers and continually reduce work-related injury and ill health.

Compliance & Standards

ISO 27001

ISO/IEC 27001 is the international standard for an information security management system (ISMS). It requires a risk-based approach to protecting confidentiality, integrity and availability of information, with 93 reference controls in Annex A of the 2022 edition.

Compliance & Standards

Conflict Minerals (Dodd-Frank Section 1502)

Conflict minerals are tin, tantalum, tungsten and gold (3TG) that may finance armed groups in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and adjoining countries. Under Dodd-Frank Section 1502, SEC-reporting companies using them must perform due diligence and file Form SD annually.

Compliance & Standards

CE Marking

CE marking is the mark a manufacturer affixes to show a product meets the applicable EU legislation, such as the Machinery, Low Voltage, EMC or RoHS directives. The manufacturer assesses conformity, compiles a technical file, signs an EU declaration of conformity and applies the mark.

Compliance & Standards

ISO/IEC 17025

ISO/IEC 17025 is the international standard for the competence of testing and calibration laboratories. Accredited labs demonstrate technical competence, valid methods, measurement traceability and impartiality, and issue results with a stated measurement uncertainty.

Compliance & Standards

Segregation of Duties (SoD)

Segregation of duties is an internal control that splits a sensitive process across different people so no single user can both create and approve a transaction, such as entering a vendor and also releasing its payment.

Compliance & Standards

Zero Trust Architecture

Zero trust is a security model that assumes no user, device or network location is trusted by default. Every request is verified for identity, device health and authorization, and access is limited to the minimum needed.

Compliance & Standards

Audit Trail

An audit trail is a secure, time-stamped record of who created, changed, approved or deleted data in a system, including old and new values. In an ERP it supports financial, quality and security audits.

Compliance & Standards

Incoterms

Incoterms are standard trade terms published by the International Chamber of Commerce that define who arranges and pays for transport, insurance and customs, and where risk passes from seller to buyer. Examples are EXW, FOB, CIF, DAP and DDP.

Integration & Data

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Integration & Data

EDI 856 (Advance Ship Notice)

The EDI 856 is the X12 transaction set a supplier sends to a customer before a shipment arrives. It lists what is in the shipment, how it is packed and labeled, and which purchase order lines it fulfils, so the receiver can plan dock work and receive by scan.

Integration & Data

EDI 810 (Invoice)

The EDI 810 is the X12 transaction set for an invoice. A supplier sends it electronically to a customer to bill for goods or services against a purchase order, and the customer's system matches it to the PO and receipt before payment.

Integration & Data

EDI 855 (Purchase Order Acknowledgment)

The EDI 855 is the X12 transaction set a supplier sends in reply to a customer's 850 purchase order. It states whether each line is accepted, changed or rejected, with the confirmed quantity, price and delivery date.

Integration & Data

AS2 (Applicability Statement 2)

AS2 is an internet protocol for exchanging EDI and other business documents directly between trading partners over HTTP or HTTPS. It adds digital signatures, encryption and a signed receipt called an MDN, so each side can prove delivery.

Integration & Data

EDIFACT

EDIFACT (UN/EDIFACT) is the international EDI standard maintained by the United Nations. It is widely used in Europe and by global supply chains, with messages such as ORDERS for purchase orders, DESADV for despatch advice and INVOIC for invoices.

Integration & Data

IDoc (Intermediate Document)

An IDoc (Intermediate Document) is SAP's standard data container for exchanging business documents such as orders, deliveries and invoices with other systems. Each IDoc has a control record, data segments and status records, and is sent through ALE or EDI.

Integration & Data

OData (Open Data Protocol)

OData (Open Data Protocol) is an OASIS standard that adds a common query language and metadata model on top of REST. Clients use URL options such as $filter, $select and $expand to read and change data without a custom endpoint for each question.

Integration & Data

ETL (Extract, Transform, Load)

ETL (extract, transform, load) is the process of copying data out of source systems such as an ERP, reshaping and cleaning it, and loading it into a data warehouse, lake or other target for reporting, analytics and AI.

Integration & Data

API Gateway

An API gateway is a server that sits in front of one or more back-end services and acts as their single entry point. It authenticates callers, enforces rate limits, routes requests, and logs traffic so each back end does not have to.

Integration & Data

Event-Driven Architecture

Event-driven architecture is a design where systems publish events, such as a goods receipt posted, and other systems subscribe and react to them. It replaces constant polling and tight point-to-point calls with loosely coupled, asynchronous messages.

Integration & Data

Single Sign-On (SSO)

Single sign-on lets users authenticate once with a central identity provider and reach the ERP and other apps without separate passwords. It uses standards such as SAML 2.0 or OpenID Connect.

Integration & Data

Data Warehouse (ERP Reporting)

A data warehouse is a separate database that copies data from ERP and other systems into a modeled structure, with history, built for reporting and analytics. It keeps heavy queries off the transactional ERP and lets you combine sources.

Integration & Data

Intelligent Document Processing (IDP)

Intelligent document processing (IDP) combines OCR with machine learning or LLMs to read documents such as supplier invoices, purchase orders and material certificates, extract the fields, and create validated records in an ERP.

Integration & Data

Advance Ship Notice (ASN)

An advance ship notice (ASN) is an electronic message a supplier sends before a shipment arrives, listing what is on the truck, how it is packed and how it is labelled. In EDI it is transaction set 856.

Integration & Data

Third-Party Logistics (3PL)

Third-party logistics (3PL) means outsourcing warehousing, transportation or order fulfillment to a specialist provider. The manufacturer's ERP stays the system of record for orders and cost, and exchanges inventory, shipment and receipt data with the 3PL.

Integration & Data

SAP IDoc (Intermediate Document)

An IDoc (Intermediate Document) is SAP's standard format for exchanging business data such as orders, shipping notices and master data between SAP and other systems, using ALE for system to system links and EDI for partners.

Integration & Data

SAP BAPI (Business Application Programming Interface)

A BAPI is a stable, remote-callable SAP function module that exposes a business object method, such as creating a purchase order or posting a goods movement, while running the same validation and authorization checks as the SAP screens.

Integration & Data

SuiteScript

SuiteScript is NetSuite's server-side and client-side JavaScript platform for custom business logic. Scripts run on record events, schedules or HTTP calls, and use the N/record, N/search and N/https modules, under governance limits on usage units per execution.

Integration & Data

Epicor BPM (Business Process Management)

Epicor BPM is the rules layer in Epicor Kinetic and Epicor 10 that intercepts business object methods and data changes. Method, Data and Base Processing directives run conditions and actions, such as validation, field updates or emails, without altering base code.

Integration & Data

JD Edwards Orchestrator

JD Edwards Orchestrator is Oracle's low-code tool in EnterpriseOne that exposes JDE forms, business functions and database data as REST services through the Application Interface Services (AIS) server, so outside apps, IoT devices and AI agents can call JDE.

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