B Terms in the Supply Chain Glossary

The process of a transportation vehicle returning to its point of origin after delivering goods. Backhauls can involve full, partial, or empty loads. An empty backhaul is referred to as deadheading.

A customer order that cannot be fulfilled immediately due to insufficient inventory.

A projection of future demand based on historical data.

The practice of comparing an organization’s products, processes, or services against those of another organization recognized for superior performance.

A title given to an organization recognized for exceptional performance in a specific process during benchmarking activities.

A consistently effective method or technique that achieves superior results and is often used as a benchmark.

A detailed price offer submitted to a prospective customer upon request, typically in competition with other vendors.

The comparison of supplier proposals based on factors like price, quality, lead time, and delivery performance to select the best supplier.

Providing customized pricing for specific jobs instead of applying a standard price for all customers.

A catch-all term to describe data sets large enough to be analyzed via computer algorithms in order to discover patterns or trends that can be used to enhance human decision-making or automatically cause an automated action to take place. Big data can be structured (data in fixed fields of a database) or unstructured (everything else).

A detailed list of all labor required for the fabrication, assembly, and testing of a product.

A legal document issued by a carrier that confirms the receipt of goods for transport, defines shipment terms and conditions, and may serve as a title of ownership, enabling authorized parties to claim the goods at their destination.

A comprehensive list of all components, subassemblies, and raw materials needed to create a product, along with the quantities required. It is used with the master production schedule to plan procurement and production.

A detailed account of the capacity and key resources required to produce one unit of an item.

A secure, continuously growing chain of data records (blocks) linked using cryptography. Each block contains a reference to the previous block, a timestamp, and transaction details, making retroactive modifications highly resistant without altering all subsequent blocks.

Splitting large shipments, such as truckloads or containers, into smaller quantities for distribution. Cargo that is not containerized but instead loaded directly into a ship’s hold is sometimes referred to as Break Bulk.

A stockpile of materials awaiting further processing. This can include raw materials, semi-finished goods, or work backlogs maintained deliberately to ensure workflow continuity.

A theory of constraints process where material is expedited into designated buffers (e.g., constraint, shipping, or assembly buffers) to prevent system delays and missed deadlines.

The proportion of an inventory buffer that has been used, typically expressed as a percentage of the total buffer size.

A supply chain phenomenon where small changes in customer demand at the downstream end lead to large fluctuations in inventory and order quantities upstream. This can cause inventory imbalances.

Transactions conducted online between businesses.

Online transactions between businesses and individual consumers.