Industrial & production-line glossary
The terms that come up on real production-line projects — sourcing, acceptance testing, controls, trade, and South African context — defined in plain language, the way we use them with manufacturers.
Acceptance, quality & commissioning
FAT — Factory Acceptance Test (FAT)
The structured test of a complete machine or line at the supplier's factory, run against acceptance criteria agreed in writing before the build starts. Passing FAT is the milestone that should release a major payment tranche and authorise shipment.
Full guide: FAT vs SAT: what to test and when
SAT — Site Acceptance Test (SAT)
The same kind of test repeated on your own floor, with your real raw material and utilities, after installation. Warranty should start at SAT, not at the date the equipment shipped.
Full guide: FAT vs SAT: what to test and when
Commissioning (cold and hot)
Bringing an installed line into stable production. Cold commissioning checks the line dry — services, interlocks and sequences; hot commissioning runs real product at rate.
Full guide: Commissioning & Maintenance
Handover
The structured transfer of a finished line to the plant — operator and maintenance training on the live line, a verified documentation pack, and demonstrated competence — completed at the SAT milestone, not on a calendar date.
Full guide: Handover and operator training
Performance guarantee
A contractual commitment to a minimum throughput — and often quality and efficiency — at acceptance, with the measurement method defined. Without it, a vague claim that the line works is unenforceable.
Liquidated damages (LDs) (LDs)
A pre-agreed, capped penalty the supplier pays for defined schedule slippage, so a late delivery carries a real contractual cost instead of just an argument.
Punch list
The documented list of outstanding defects and incomplete items recorded at handover, each with an owner and a due date, that must be closed before final acceptance.
CE marking (CE)
A manufacturer's declaration that equipment meets the applicable EU health, safety and environmental directives. Useful, but not a substitute for verifying the certificate and the compliance behind it.
ISO 9001 (ISO 9001)
A quality-management-system standard. It signals documented process discipline, not product quality on its own — confirm the certificate is current and actually covers the factory building your machine.
Sourcing, shipping & customs
Incoterms 2020
ICC-published trade terms that define exactly where cost and risk pass from seller to buyer in an international shipment. The wrong term quietly shifts large costs and liabilities onto you.
Full guide: Incoterms for African manufacturing imports
FOB — Free On Board (FOB)
The seller delivers the goods, cleared for export, on board the vessel at the named origin port; cost and risk pass to you there. CISH usually recommends FOB on machinery imports for cost transparency.
Full guide: FOB vs CIF vs DAP
CIF — Cost, Insurance & Freight (CIF)
The seller pays freight and minimum marine insurance to the destination port, but risk still passes at the origin port. Convenient, but freight and insurance are bundled into the supplier's price.
DAP — Delivered At Place (DAP)
The seller delivers to a named place ready for unloading; you handle import clearance and duties. Useful when you want the supplier to own the freight leg but keep customs in your control.
EXW — Ex Works (EXW)
You take responsibility from the supplier's gate onward — the maximum buyer responsibility and usually the riskiest term for an inexperienced importer.
HS code (HS)
The Harmonised System tariff classification that sets the import duty rate. Get it wrong and SARS can reclassify the goods, sometimes upward — validate it before signing the contract.
ITAC (ITAC)
South Africa's International Trade Administration Commission, which administers import and export permits and the duty rebates relevant to some machinery imports.
Lead time
The elapsed time from a confirmed order to a defined milestone such as FAT or delivery. For a production line it runs in months, and is dominated by design and build, not by shipping.
BOM — Bill of Materials (BOM)
The structured list of every component, sub-assembly and quantity in a machine. A complete BOM at handover is what makes future spares and maintenance possible.
OEM — Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM)
The company that actually designs and builds the equipment, as opposed to a trading company reselling it. Knowing whether you are dealing with the OEM changes the entire negotiation.
Full guide: Chinese supplier audit checklist
Milestone payment
Releasing payment in tranches tied to verified deliverables — typically 30% deposit, 50% on FAT, 20% on SAT — instead of calendar dates, so money stays aligned with real, accepted progress.
Full guide: How to pay a Chinese supplier safely
LC — Letter of Credit (LC)
A bank instrument that pays the supplier only against compliant shipping and documentary evidence, protecting both sides on large or first-time contracts. It verifies documents, not quality — FAT and SAT still do that.
Full guide: How to pay a Chinese supplier safely
T/T — Telegraphic Transfer (T/T)
A direct international bank wire, the usual way to pay equipment milestones. Its safety comes from milestone discipline and verifying the beneficiary account against the contracting entity — not from the instrument itself.
Forex / currency risk
The risk that your local currency weakens against the contract currency (usually USD) between signing and final payment, raising the real cost. Over a 6–12 month import a 5–15% move can exceed contingency.
Full guide: Forex & currency risk on a China import
FEC — Forward Exchange Contract (FEC)
An agreement with your bank to buy foreign currency at a fixed rate on a future date. Matched to each payment milestone, it locks the local-currency cost of an import so a currency swing cannot blow the budget.
Full guide: Forex & currency risk on a China import
SONCAP (SONCAP)
The Standards Organisation of Nigeria Conformity Assessment Programme. Regulated goods imported into Nigeria need a product certificate and a SONCAP certificate, obtained before shipment through an accredited agency.
Full guide: Importing into Nigeria or Kenya
PVoC — Pre-Export Verification of Conformity (PVoC)
Kenya's conformity programme, administered by KEBS. Regulated goods are inspected and certified in the export country, producing a Certificate of Conformity needed for customs clearance.
Full guide: Importing into Nigeria or Kenya
Form M
A mandatory import declaration registered through the importer's bank in Nigeria before shipment; it underpins both the import process and access to foreign exchange.
IDF — Import Declaration Form (IDF)
The import declaration lodged before importing goods into Kenya, alongside a KRA PIN, as part of customs clearance.
Performance & operations
OEE — Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE)
A single percentage combining Availability × Performance × Quality that shows how much good output a line produces against its theoretical maximum. Around 85% is often called world-class, but the trend matters more than the headline number.
Full guide: Measuring OEE without a new PLC
Bottleneck
The single slowest step that caps the throughput of the whole line. Adding capacity anywhere except the bottleneck does not increase output.
Changeover
The time and work to switch a line from one product or format to another. Frequent short runs make changeover time a major and often hidden cost.
Ramp-up
The period after commissioning when output and stability climb toward the design target. Budget for it — day-one rate is rarely the contracted rate.
Throughput (bph, tpd)
The actual output rate of a line in product units — for example bph (bottles per hour) on a filling line, or tpd (tonnes per day) on a mill. Always separate peak from sustained average.
MTBF / MTTR
Mean Time Between Failures and Mean Time To Repair — the two numbers that describe reliability. High MTBF and low MTTR is the goal, and a sound spares strategy is what protects MTTR.
Full guide: Spare-parts strategy
TCO — Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)
The full lifetime cost of a line — purchase, install, energy, labour, maintenance, spares and downtime — not just the machine price, which is often only 15–35% of the 10-year total.
Full guide: Total cost of ownership
Capex and Opex
Capital expenditure, the upfront cost of buying and installing the asset, versus operating expenditure, the ongoing cost of running it. Cheap capex with heavy opex is a common false economy.
PM — Preventive Maintenance (PM)
Planned, scheduled maintenance — inspection, lubrication, and replacing wear parts before they fail — that keeps a line reliable, as opposed to fixing things only after they break.
Full guide: Commissioning & Maintenance
Controls & digitalisation
PLC — Programmable Logic Controller (PLC)
The industrial controller that runs a machine's logic, sequences and safety interlocks. Its age and brand support largely decide how upgradable a line is.
Full guide: When to upgrade your PLC
HMI — Human-Machine Interface (HMI)
The operator screen used to run and monitor a line. A good HMI surfaces faults and data clearly; a poor one hides them.
SCADA (SCADA)
Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition — the layer that monitors and logs data across multiple machines or a whole plant, above the individual PLCs.
Retrofit
Adding new capability — sensors, controls, monitoring — to an existing line without replacing it. Often the fastest payback available in digitalisation.
Full guide: What digitalisation costs
Digitalisation
Instrumenting a line so its real performance is visible and actionable, from basic output counting up to full OEE tracking and predictive maintenance.
Machine vision (AOI) (AOI)
Automated optical inspection — industrial cameras, controlled lighting and software that inspect every product on a line for defects, dimensions, codes and labels, faster and more consistently than manual inspection.
Full guide: Machine Vision Inspection
OCR / OCV
Optical Character Recognition reads printed text such as date and lot codes; Optical Character Verification checks that the printed code is present, correct and legible. Both are common machine-vision checks before product ships.
Full guide: Machine vision inspection: cost and where it pays
Power & resilience
Load shedding
Scheduled rolling power cuts imposed when grid supply cannot meet demand, routine in South Africa. For a production line the cost is two-fold: lost output, and damage to controls and drives from the abrupt stop and the surge when power returns.
Full guide: Protecting a line from load shedding
UPS — Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS)
A battery-backed supply that switches over instantly to ride through a power dip. On a line its job is to keep the controls (PLC, HMI, SCADA) alive long enough to keep running or shut down cleanly — not to run the motors.
Full guide: Generator vs UPS vs battery
Generator (genset)
An engine-driven power source, usually diesel, that supplies power for as long as it is fuelled. Economical for long or large backup loads, but it picks up with a short delay and carries fuel and maintenance cost.
Full guide: Generator vs UPS vs battery
BESS — Battery Energy Storage System (BESS)
A battery system that stores hours of energy and can run real loads through an outage, switching instantly. Often paired with solar to cut tariff cost; expensive per stored hour, so it is sized to genuine need.
Full guide: Solar for a production line
ATS — Automatic Transfer Switch (ATS)
The device that automatically switches a load from grid to generator (and back) when power fails or returns, so backup power picks up without manual intervention.
VSD / VFD — Variable Speed Drive (VSD)
An electronic drive that controls motor speed and torque, saving energy and enabling soft starts. Sensitive to dirty power, so it needs surge and undervoltage protection in load-shedding conditions.
Surge & undervoltage protection
Devices in the MCC that protect equipment from voltage spikes and brown-outs — most importantly the surge when grid power returns, which is a leading cause of load-shedding equipment failure.
Full guide: Load-shedding protection
Process, water & hygiene
RO — Reverse Osmosis (RO)
A membrane process that removes dissolved salts and most contaminants from water, producing purified water. The workhorse of bottled-water treatment for purified or table water and hard, brackish, or borehole sources; not used for natural mineral water.
Full guide: Bottling line water treatment
UV disinfection (UV)
Disinfecting water by passing it under ultraviolet lamps, killing microbes with no chemical and no residual. A near-universal final polish on bottling lines, usually paired with ozone for residual protection.
Full guide: Bottling line water treatment
Ozone (ozonation)
A final disinfectant dosed into bottled product water that leaves a short-lived residual through filling and early shelf life, then decays back to oxygen. Also used to sanitise tanks and bottles.
Full guide: Bottling line water treatment
TDS — Total Dissolved Solids (TDS)
A measure of the dissolved salts and minerals in water. High TDS or brackish water usually requires reverse osmosis, and the figure is a key input to designing a water-treatment train.
Full guide: Bottling line water treatment
CIP — Clean-in-Place (CIP)
Automated cleaning and sanitising of process equipment without dismantling it, circulating cleaning solutions through tanks, pipework, and fillers. Essential on food, beverage, and dairy lines.
Cold chain & refrigeration
Cold room (chiller)
A refrigerated room that chills and holds product above freezing, typically 0–8 °C — for fresh produce, dairy, meat holding, and beverages.
Full guide: Cold room & blast freezer sizing
Blast freezer
A unit that rapidly freezes fresh product by blowing very cold, high-velocity air, driving it through the freezing zone fast to protect quality. A process, not just storage, needing far more refrigeration power than a holding freezer.
Full guide: Cold room & blast freezer sizing
Heat load
The total heat a refrigeration plant must remove — from product, throughput, wall transmission, door infiltration, and internal sources. Cold storage is sized by heat load, not by floor area.
Full guide: Cold room & blast freezer sizing
Refrigerant
The working fluid in a refrigeration system. Larger industrial plants often use ammonia for efficiency; smaller systems use modern lower-GWP HFC/HFO blends as older high-GWP refrigerants are phased down.
South Africa & Africa context
B-BBEE (B-BBEE)
Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment — South Africa's framework scoring procurement and ownership transformation, which can affect how a sourcing split is weighted on public and large private projects.
Full guide: B-BBEE & local content
Local content
The share of a project's value created locally — fabrication, assembly, labour. It can carry scoring and incentive weight, and it changes the buy-versus-build calculation.
Full guide: Buy from China vs fabricate locally
AfCFTA (AfCFTA)
The African Continental Free Trade Area, progressively reducing tariffs on qualifying intra-African trade and reshaping where it makes sense to fabricate.
SADC (SADC)
The Southern African Development Community — the regional bloc whose member markets many CISH projects serve.
Delivery models
Turnkey
A delivery model where one party is accountable end-to-end — scope, supply, install, commission and handover — so you sign one contract and hold one party responsible.
Full guide: Turnkey Production Lines
Hybrid delivery
Combining imported equipment with local fabrication and integration to balance cost, lead time and local content.
Full guide: Local & Hybrid Manufacturing
Hit a term we haven't defined?
If a term keeps coming up in your project and isn't here, tell us — we'll define it, and usually write the guide behind it.