Acceptance Criteria: Specified limits placed on characteristics of an item, process or service defined in codes, standards or other requirement documents

Accreditation: Certification by a duly recognized body of the facilities, capability, objectivity, competence and integrity of an agency, service or operational group or individual to provide the specific service(s) or operations(s) needed

Accredited Laboratory: An Accredited Laboratory is one that has been reviewed and approved by a nationally recognized accreditation body [e.g., American Association for Laboratory Accreditation (A2LA), the Standards Council of Canada (SCC), United Kingdom Accreditation Service (UKAS), the Laboratoire de Recherches et de Contrôle du Caoutchouc et des Plastiques (LRCCP) or the Association Interprofessionnelle de France (AINF)].

Accuracy: The extent to which the measured value of a quantity matches with the accepted value for that quantity

Advanced Product Quality Planning (APQP): The basis for program management for Federal-Mogul Corporation. (See the Automotive Industry Action Group [AIAG] Advanced Product Quality Planning and Control Plan reference manual.)

Advanced Shipping Notification (ASN): Required document for proper identification of inbound material. The preferred method is electronic notification.

Approval: An act of endorsing or adding positive authorization

Assessment: An evaluation process including a document review, on-site Initial Qualification and/or Product Process Assessment and report

Attribute: A characteristic or property of a product

Audit: A structured and documented on-site verification activity used to determine the effective implementation of a supplier’s documented quality system

Awareness: Personal understanding of the interrelationship of quality and productivity, directing attention to the requirement for management commitment and statistical thinking to achieve never-ending improvement

Benchmark Data: The results of an investigation to determine how competitors and/or best-in-class companies achieve their level of performance

Bill of Material: Total list of all components/materials to manufacture the product

CAD/CAM Data: A form of design record by which all dimensional information necessary to define a product is conveyed electronically

Calibration: The comparison of measuring and test equipment or a measurement standard of unknown accuracy to a measurement standard of known accuracy in order to detect, correlate, report or eliminate by adjustment any variation in accuracy of the measuring and test equipment or measurement standard being compared

Characteristic: Any property or attribute of an item, process or service that is distinct, describable and measurable, as conforming or nonconforming to specified quality requirements

Control Characteristic: Those characteristics or process parameters in which any slight variation will cause potential hazard to the end user

Control Chart: A graphic representation of a characteristic of a process, showing plotted values of some statistic gathered from that characteristic, a central line, and one or two control limits. It minimizes the net economic loss from Type I and Type II errors. It has two basic uses: as a judgment to determine if a process has been operating in statistical control and to aid in maintaining statistical control.

Control Limit: A line (or lines) on a control chart used as a basis for judging the stability of a process. Variation beyond a control limit is evidence that special causes are affecting the process. Control limits are calculated from process data and are not to be confused with engineering specifications.

Control Plan: A phase of quality planning that involves the development of a written, summary description of the system for controlling all significant characteristics of a specific product. A single control plan may apply to a group or family of products that are produced by the same process. 

Corrective Action: Action taken to eliminate the causes of an exiting nonconformity, defect or other undesirable situation, in order to prevent recurrence

Designed Experiment (DE): A plan to conduct tests that involves all of the prework that must be accomplished before any test is conducted. Prework requirements: questions are written, data collection sheets are prepared, analysis of data is laid out and the limitations of the test are known.

Flow Chart: A visual map or graphical representation depicting the steps or activities that constitute a process. The flow chart is constructed from standardized symbols that include inputs, outputs, activities and decisions.

FM-TIPS (Federal-Mogul Techniques in Problem-Solving): FM-TIPS is an eight-step process to ensure that all problems affecting quality and productivity are thoroughly analyzed, with the root cause of the problem being found, eliminated and verified for effectiveness.

Kaizen: Taken from the Japanese words kai and zen, where kai means change and zen means good. The popular meaning is continual improvement of all areas of a company, not just quality.

Layout Drawings/Sales Print: Drawings that show all projected views, key measurements and special characteristics of the received manufactured part for receiving verification

Material Certification: A document demonstrating compliance to requirements, signed by an authorized supplier representative, which states test results for all special characteristics established in the standard or on the print

Parts Per Million (PPM): PPM is a way of stating the performance of a process in terms of actual or projected defective material. PPM data can be used to indicate areas of variation requiring attention.

Problem-Solving: The process of moving from symptoms to causes to actions that improve performance. Among the basic techniques that can be used are: Pareto charts, cause-and-effect diagrams and statistical process-control techniques.

Production Part Approval Process (PPAP): Generic requirements for the production part approval for all production and service commodities, including bulk materials. (See AIAG Production Part Approval Process [PPAP] reference manual.)

Quality: The totality of the characteristics of a product or service that affect its ability to satisfy specified requirements

Quality Assurance: A planned and systematic pattern of all actions necessary to provide adequate confidence that a product or service will satisfy given needs. This includes a continuing evaluation of adequacy and effectiveness with a view to having timely corrective measures and feedback where necessary.

Quality Management System: The organizational structure, responsibilities, procedures, processes and resources for implementing quality management. This includes the collective plans, activities and events that are provided to ensure that a product, process or service will satisfy given needs. The management system directs and controls an organization with regard to quality.

Quality Planning: Activities that establish the objectives and requirements for quality and for the application of quality system elements. Note: Quality planning covers product planning, managerial and operational planning, and the preparation of quality plans and the making of provisions for quality improvement such as business plans. (See the AIAG Advanced Product Quality Planning and Control Plan reference manual.)

Safety Characteristic (§): A product characteristic or process parameter in which significant variation will impact the form, fit and function of the product

Shipping: A term commonly used to indicate the “delivery” of material or product to the customer or the next process

Simultaneous Engineering: A way of simultaneously designing products and the processes for manufacturing those products, through the use of cross-functional teams to assure manufacturability and reduce cycle time

Six-Sigma: A disciplined methodology for reducing process variability to make a significant impact to the bottom line of the business. The Six-Sigma methodology uses numerous problem-solving, design of experiments and control tools to achieve long-lasting process improvement to meet strategic objectives and customer needs.

Special Characteristic: A product characteristic for which reasonably anticipated variation is likely to significantly affect customer satisfaction, fit/function or compliance to government regulations.

Specification: A precise statement of a set of requirements to be satisfied by a material, product, system or service that indicates the procedures for determining whether each of the requirements is satisfied. Specifications should not be confused with control limits, which represent the “voice of the process.”

Statistical Process Control (SPC): Use of statistical techniques such as control charts to analyze a process or its outputs so as to take appropriate actions to achieve and maintain a state of statistical control and to improve process capability

Supplier Corrective Action Request (SCAR): The SCAR application enables interactive communication and documentation of corrective actions with suppliers.

Testing: Verification of the capability of an item or product to meet specified requirements

Tooling Maintenance: Tooling maintenance is the periodic sharpening, polishing or other servicing of a tool. This maintenance will not significantly affect the dimensions or other characteristics of the product produced by the tool.

Tooling Refurbishment: Tooling refurbishment is the major overhaul of a tool. Refurbishment can affect dimensions or other characteristics of the product produced by the tool. 

Traceability: The ability to trace the specific history, application or location of an item and like items or activities by means of documented identification

Value Engineering/Value Analysis (VE/VA): A function-oriented, systematic, team approach to eliminate or prevent unnecessary cost. VA is commonly used to indicate a value study of an existing product, project or system. VE is commonly used to indicate using value methods to design them.

Variation: The inevitable differences among individual outputs of a process. The sources of variation can be grouped into two major classes: common causes and special causes.

Verification: The act of reviewing, inspecting, testing, checking, auditing or otherwise determining and documenting whether items, processes, services, systems or documents conform to specified requirements

Waiver: Documented authorization to deviate from specified requirements