The Gathering of the Parker Clan

Yesterday, I was priviledged to be one of the two keynote speakers for the 2006 Parker Industrial Distributor Meeting in Ft. Myers Fla. Actually, the meeting was at the Naples Beach Hotel and Golf Club, a wonderful old resort on the southwest coast of Florida. Very nice place, and the Parker people were very nice too.
The other speaker was Tom Cheyney (cheynman@gmail.com), former editor of Micro magazine, and industry analyst, pundit and expert in the field of microelectronics and the semiconductor manufacturing industry. Among the wonderful statistics he laid on us, was the following, which I asked him to send me because I died laughing when he put it up:

Alternate Acronyms and Initialisms

PPW – parts per whatever
POM – point of misuse
OCD – obsessively compulsive distributor
MPD – multiple personality distributor
ZVA – zero value added
MTTL – mean time ‘til lunch
MTBS – mean time between screw-ups
FPE – finger-pointing exercise
BUF – badly utilized filtration
WIP – wafers in peril
FUCT – flagrantly unacceptable cycle times
I expect you might see Tom in the pages of Control one of these days.
Tom can be found blogging at the former Micro magazine website.