EAI
see Enterprise Application Integration

EAN
see European Article Number

EAN 13
EAN barcodes are used when the country origin needs to be known. There are 13 digits in EAN 13, where the first two characters are used to define the country of origin, the next 10 are data, followed by the checksum. Both 2 and 5 digit supplementals are also supported.

EAN 8
EAN barcodes are used when the country origin needs to be known. There are 8 digits in EAN 8, where the first two characters are used to define the country of origin, the next 5 are data, followed by the checksum. Both 2 and 5 digit supplementals are also supported.

EAN.UCC
European Article Numbering/ Uniform Code Council. The EAN.UCC System provides identification standards to uniquely identify trade items, logistics units, locations, assets, and service relations worldwide. The identification standards define the construction of globally-unique and unambiguous numbers. For additional reference, please see http://www.uccouncil. org/ ean

Early Supplier Involvement
The process of involving suppliers early in the product design activity and drawing on their expertise, insights, and knowledge to generate better designs in less time and designs that are easier to manufacture with high quality.

Earnings
Income after a company’s taxes and all other expenses have been paid. Also called profit or net income.

Earnings Before Interest and Taxes
A measure of a company’s earning power from ongoing operations, equal to earnings (revenues minus cost of sales, operating expenses, and taxes) before deduction of interest payments and income taxes. Also called operating profit.

EBIT
see Earnings Before Interest and Taxes

EC
see E-Commerce

EC
see Electronic Commerce

ECCN
Export control classification number.

Echelon
A level of supply chain nodes. For example, a supply chain with two independent factory warehouses and nine wholesale warehouses delivering product to 350 retail stores is a supply chain with three echelons between the factory and the end customer. One echelon consists of the two independent factory warehouses.One echelon consists of the nine wholesale warehouses. One echelon consists of the 350 retail stores. Each echelon adds operating expense, holds inventory, adds to the cycle time, and expects to make a profit.

ECO
see Engineering Change Order

E-Commerce
Conducting business electronically via EDI technologies, or online via the Internet. Software programs run the main functions of e-commerce support, such as product display, ordering, shipment, billing, and inventory management. Also written as electronic commerce (EC).

Economic Order Quantity
An inventory model that determines how much to order by determining the amount that will meet customer service levels while minimizing total ordering and holding costs.

Economic Value Added
A measure of the shareholder value as a company’s operating profits after tax, less a charge for the capital used in creating the profits. EVA is a registered trademark of Stern & Co. in the USA.

Economy of Scale
A phenomenon whereby larger volumes of production reduce unit cost by distributing fixed costs over a larger quantity.

ECR
see Efficient Consumer Response

EDI
see Electronic Data Interchange

EDI message
An approved, published and maintained formal description of how to structure the data required to perform a specific business function in such a way as to allow for the transfer and handling of this data by electronic means.

EDI Standards
Criteria that define the data content and format requirements for specific business transactions (e.g. purchase orders). Using standard formats allows companies to exchange transactions with multiple trading partners easily. Also see: American National Standards Institute, Uniform Code Council

EDI Transmission
A functional group of one or more EDI transactions that are sent to the same location, in the same transmission, and are identified by a functional group header and trailer.

EDIFACT
EDIFACT stands for Electronic Data Interchange For Administration, Commerce and Transport. EDIFACT is an international standard provided by ISO 9735 (created in 1986): * Provides a set of syntax rules to structure data.* Provides an interactive exchange protocol (I-EDI)* Provides standard messages (allows multi-country and multi-industry exchange)

Efficient Consumer Response
A demand driven replenishment system designed to link all parties in the logistics channel to create a massive flow-through distribution network. Replenishment is based upon consumer demand and point of sale information.

EFT
see Electronic Funds Transfer

EIN
see Exporter Identification Number

EIR
see Equipment Interchange Receipt

Electronic Commerce
Also written as e-commerce. Conducting business electronically via traditional EDI technologies, or online via the Internet. In the traditional sense of selling goods, it is possible to do this electronically because of certain software programs that run the main functions of an e-commerce website, such as product display, online ordering, and inventory management. The definition of e-commerce includes business activity that is business-to-business (B2B), business-to-consumer (B2C).

Electronic Data Interchange
Intercompany, computer-to-computer transmission of business information in a standard format. For EDI purists, ‘computer-to-computer’ means direct transmission from the originating application program to the receiving, or processing, application program. An EDI transmission consists only of business data, not any accompanying verbiage or free-form messages. Purists might also contend that a standard format is one that is approved by a national or international standards organization, as opposed to formats developed by industry groups or companies.

Electronic Data Interchange Association
A national body that propagates and controls the use of EDI in a given country. All EDIAs are nonprofit organizations dedicated to encouraging EDI growth. The EDIA in the United States was formerly TDCC and administered the development of standards in transportation and other industries.

Electronic Funds Transfer
Payment for goods or services via exchanges of electronic authorisations against bank accounts. Authorisation is sent to an automated clearing house (usually a bank), which verifies the source of the transaction as having control over the accounts, and performs the fund transfer.

Electronic Mail (E-Mail)
The computer-to-computer exchange of messages. E-mail is usually unstructured (free-form) rather than in a structured format. X.400 has become the standard for e-mail exchange.

Electronic Product Code
An electronically coded tag that is intended as an improvement to the UPC bar code system. The EPC is a 96-bit tag which contains a number called the Global Trade Identification Number (GTIN). Unlike a UPC number, which only provides information specific to a group of products, the GTIN gives each product its own specific identifying number, giving greater accuracy in tracking.

Electronic Signature
A form of authentication that provides identification and validation of a transaction by means of an authorization code identifying the individual or organization

Elkins Act
An amendment to the IC Act that prohibits giving rebates.

e-Logistics
E-logistics simply means the processes necessary to transfer the goods sold over the Internet to the customers (Auramo et al., 2001). Another more sophisticated aspect is that E-logistics are a wide-ranging topic related to supply chain integration that has the effect of eliminating intermediaries (such as wholesalers or retailers) and also fosters the emergence of new players like logisticians, whose role is to adapt traditional logistics chains to take into account the requirements of e-business.

E-mail
See Electronic Mail

Emergency Purchase
A purchase made when unpredictable needs must be met. This type of purchase is most often made when health, safety or conservation risks are imminent or when other imperative needs arise.

Emergency Stock
The quantity of a commodity that must be maintained on hand at all times to provide for initial response to an unplanned catastrophic event.

Empirical
Pertaining to a statement or formula based upon experience or observation rather than on deduction or theory.

Empowerment
A condition whereby employees have the authority to make decisions and take action in their work areas without prior approval. For example, an operator can stop a production process if he or she detects a problem, or a customer service representative can send out a replacement product if a customer calls with a problem.

Encryption
The transformation of readable text into coded text for security purposes.

End item
A product sold as a completed item or repair part, any item subject to a customer order or sales forecast. Synonym: Finished Goods Inventory.

End-of-Life
Planning and execution at the end of the life of a product. The challenge is making just the right amount to avoid A) ending up with excess, which have to be sold at great discounts or scrapped or B) ending up with shortages before the next generation is available.

End-of-Life Inventory
Inventory on hand that will satisfy future demand for products that are no longer in production at your entity.

End-Use
Commodities delivered to a using location and no longer accountable as inventory. End-use items may also be subject to issue control at the using location.

End-Use Stores
Merchandise purchased for the exclusive use of a specific cost center which pays for the commodity on delivery to the warehouse. The material is then kept in inventory for the convenience of the purchasing cost center and is not chargeable to the inventory general ledger or any trust account.

Engineered flow of information
The method that prevents supply chain flows from happening by chance through reorganizations, outsourcing, mergers, and acquisitions. Instead, supply chains should be engineered for competitiveness, meaning they should be designed and optimized to match the business strategy and deliver the intended product.

Engineering Change
A revision to a drawing or design released by engineering to modify or correct a part. The request for the change can be from a customer or from production, quality control, another department, or a supplier. Synonym: Engineering Change Order.

Engineering Change Order
A documented and approved revision to a product or process specification.

Engineer-to-Order
A process in which the manufacturing organization must first prepare (engineer) significant product or process documentation before manufacture may begin.

En-route
Shipment in a carrier’s possession and being transported.

Enterprise Application Integration
A computer term for the tools and techniques used in linking ERP and other enterprise systems together. Linking systems is key for e-business. Gartner say ‘firms implementing enterprise applications spend at least 30% on point-to-point interfaces’.

Enterprise Resource Planning
A class of software for planning and managing ‘enterprise-wide’ the resources needed to take customer orders, ship them, account for them and replenish all needed goods according to customer orders and forecasts. Often includes electronic commerce with suppliers. Examples of ERP systems are the application suites from SAP, Oracle, PeopleSoft and others.

Enterprise-Wide ABM
A management information system that uses activity-based information to facilitate decision making across an organization.

Enveloping
An EDI management software function that groups all documents of the same type, or functional group, and bound for the same destination into an electronic envelope. Enveloping is useful where there are multiple documents such as orders or invoices issued to a single trading partner that need to be sent as a packet.

Environmentally Sensitive Engineering
Designing features in a product and its packaging that improve recycling, etc. It can include elimination of compounds that are hazardous to the environment.

EOQ
see Economic Order Quantity

EPC
see Electronic Product Code

EPS
A computer term. Encapsulated Postscript. An extension of the PostScript graphics file format developed by Adobe Systems. EPS lets PostScript graphics files be incorporated into other documents.

Equal Employment Opportunity
A priority to hire disadvantaged or minority persons in the workplace.

Equal or Equivalent
Terms to indicate that similar products or other brands may be acceptable for purchase if specifications are comparable and functional requirements are proven.

Equalisation
(1) Monetary allowance to a customer for picking up or delivering cargo to or from a point which is not the origin/destination shown on the B/L. (2) Compensation for additional charges incurred by the shipper for delivering cargo to port designated by the carrier other than the closest port to the supplier.

Equipment Interchange Receipt
A document used to receive or deliver a full or empty container/chassis at any terminal or inland container pool/depot.

Equipment Maintenance and Depreciation
Actual amount of depreciation based on acquisition cost and useful life and actual maintenance costs.

Equipment Relocation
The relocation of any form of business equipment from one location to another that usually involves special handling, packaging, mode of transportation, and de-install/install. The types of equipment could be office gear, IT assets, hospital assets, plant assets, inventory storage assets or any complex gear. Using an asset swap can reduce the downtime associated with these complex items and support a quick and efficient turnover during the actual relocation to minimize downtime. See Asset Swap.

Ergonomic
The science of creating workspaces and products which are human friendly to use.

Error List
Report showing discrepancies (errors) in data input.

ERS
see Evaluated Receipts Settlement

ESI
see Early Supplier Involvement

Estimated Time of Arrival
The expected date, including time of arrival of a shipment, passenger or vessel at a port, airport or terminal.

ETA
see Estimated Time of Arrival

ETD
See Estimated Time of Departure.

Ethernet
A computer term for the most commonly used type of local area network (LAN) communication protocol using coaxial or twisted pair wiring.

Ethical standards
A set of guidelines for proper conduct by business professionals.

European Article Number
A defined numbering mechanism used in Europe to uniquely identify every retail product and packaging option. The EAN is similar in concept and design to the UPC code and is usually what the barcode represents on goods. Also see: Uniform Product Code.

EVA
see Economic Value Added

Evaluated Receipts Settlement
A process for authorizing payment for goods based on actual receipts with purchase order data, when price has already been negotiated. The basic premise behind ERS is that all of the information in the invoice is already transmitted in the shipping documentation. Therefore, the invoice is eliminated and the shipping documentation is used to pay the vendor.

Evaluation Committee
An appointment of advisors and information examiners to assist in the determination to award a contract.

Ex Works
Incoterm. Title and risk pass to buyer including payment of all transportation and insurance cost from the seller’s door. Used for any mode of transportation.

Exception
Notations made when the cargo is received at the carrier’s terminal or loaded aboard a vessel. Irregularities in packaging or actual or suspected damage to the cargo are notated on the bill of lading.

Exception Inventory
Inventory quantities that are above a specific need.

Exception Message
See Action Message

Exception Rate
A change or exception made to the classification affecting the class rate.

Exception-Based Processing
A computer term for applications that automatically highlight particular events or results which fall outside pre-determined parameters. This saves considerable effort by automatically finding problems and alerting the right persons. An example would be where a shorted item on a purchase order receipt would automatically notify a purchasing agent for follow-up.

Exclusive Patronage Agreements
A shipper agrees to use only member liner firms of a conference in return for a 10% to 15% rate reduction.

Exclusive Use
Service ordered by the shipper, whereby the shipper obtains exclusive use of a vehicle and agrees to the terms for this service.

Exempt Carrier
A for-hire carrier that is free from economic regulation. Trucks hauling certain commodities are exempt from Interstate Commerce Commission economic regulation. By far the largest portion of exempt carriers transports agricultural commodities or seafood.

Expediting
(1) Moving shipments through regular channels at an accelerated rate. (2) To take extraordinary action because of an increase in relative priority. (3) Following up on orders placed to insure timely shipment and delivery. Synonym: Stockchase.

Expert system
A computer program that mimics a human expert.

Explode-to-Deduct
See Backflush

Exponential Smoothing Forecast
In forecasting, a type of weighted moving average forecasting technique in which past observations are geometrically discounted according to their age. The heaviest weight is assigned to the most recent data. The smoothing is termed exponential because data points are weighted in accordance with an exponential function of their age. The technique makes use of a smoothing constant to apply to the difference between the most recent forecast and the critical sales data, thus avoiding the necessity of carrying historical sales data. The approach can be used for data that exhibit no trend or seasonal patterns. Higher order exponential smoothing models can be used for data with either (or both) trend and seasonality

Export
(1) In logistics, the movement of products from one country to another. For example, significant volumes of cut flowers are exported from The Netherlands to other countries of the world. (2) A computer term referring to the transfer of information from a source (system or database) to a target.

Export Broker
A firm that brings together buyer and seller for a fee, then eventually withdraws from the transaction.

Export Compliance
In compliance with rules for exporting products, including packaging, labeling, and documentation.

Export Declaration
(1) Government document permitting designated goods to leave the country. Issued by the U.S. Dept. of Commerce. Includes complete particulars on the shipment. Although customers can submit their declarations themselves to U.S. Customs, the carrier is still responsible for penalities if the documentation is not available by the time a vessel is ‘cleared’ by customs for sailing. Also known as an ex-dec or SED (Shipper?s Export Declaration). (2) Shippers need to obtain a Bureau of Census document which spells out shipment details for entry into a government statistical system. Documents for export shipping, declaring the value of the cargo to the U.S. Customs.

Export License
A certificate secured from a government granting permission to an exporter to export a specific quantity of a controlled commodity to a certain country. An export license is often required if a government has placed embargoes or other restrictions upon exports.

Export sales contract
The initial document in any international transaction, it details the specifics of the sales agreement between the buyer and seller.

Exporter Identification Number
A number required for the exporter on the Shipper’s Export Declaration. A corporation may use their Federal Employer Identification Number as provided by the IRS, individuals can use their Social Security Numbers.

Exports
A term used to describe products produced in one country and sold in another. Also see: Export

Express
(1) Carrier payment to its customers when ships, rail cars, or trailers are unloaded or loaded in less than the time allowed by contract and returned to the carrier for use. Also see: demurrage, detention.(2) The use of priority package delivery to achieve overnight or second-day delivery.

Express Warranty
A promise made by the seller relating to quality, performance or other considerations which would encourage a decision to purchase.

Extended 3 of 9
Similar to Code 3 of 9 except that it allows the full 128 ASCII character set to be encoded by printing two barcode characters for each text character.

Extended Code 93
Similar to Code 93 except that it allows the full 128 character ASCII character set to be encoded.

Extended Enterprise
The notion that supply chain partners form a larger entity which works together as though it were a single unit.

Extended supply chain community
Supply chains that take advantage of e-market (electronic market) services.

Extensible Markup Language
A computer term for a language that facilitates direct communication among computers on the Internet. Unlike the older hypertext markup language (HTML), which provides data tags giving instructions to a web browser about how to display information, XML tags give instructions to a browser or to application software which help to define the specifics about the category of information.

Extension
A contract condition that provides for an option to continue the contract to a later date should additional time be needed, after the expiration date, to solicit competitive bids and establish a new contract.

External Factory
A situation where suppliers are viewed as an extension of the firm’s manufacturing capabilities and capacities. The same practices and concerns that are commonly applied to the management of the firm’s manufacturing system should also be applied to the management of the external factory.

Extra Loader
Additional vessel brought into schedule to cope with exceptionally strong market conditions.

Extranet
A computer term describing a private network (or a secured link on the public internet) that links separate organizations and that uses the same software and protocols as the Internet. Used for improving supply chain management. For example, extranets are used to provide access to a supply chain partner’s internal inventory data which is not available to unrelated parties. Antonym: Intranet.

Extrinsic Forecast
In forecasting, a forecast based on a correlated leading indicator, such as estimating furniture sales based on housing starts. Extrinsic forecasts tend to be more useful for large aggregations, such as total company sales, than for individual product sales. Antonym: intrinsic forecast method.

EXW
see Ex Works

ETO
See Engineer-to-Order

ETO
See Engineer-to-Order