Manufacturing and Production Cheat Sheet 2026

The 30 highest-yield Manufacturing and Production facts, distilled from real exam questions. Print it, save it as a PDF, or study it here — free, no sign-up.

1. What does NFPA 70E address in industrial facilities? → Electrical safety in the workplace including arc flash hazards
2. In manufacturing supply chains, 'Total Cost of Ownership' (TCO) considers: → All costs associated with acquiring, using, and disposing of an item over its lifetime
3. A 'pull system' in lean manufacturing means: → Production is triggered by actual customer demand
4. Which maintenance strategy typically results in the HIGHEST unplanned downtime costs? → Reactive (breakdown) maintenance
5. What does OEE stand for in manufacturing? → Overall Equipment Effectiveness
6. Which daily maintenance task is most critical for a CNC machining center? → Clean chips and debris, and check lubricant and coolant levels
7. What does MTBF stand for in machine maintenance? → Mean Time Between Failures
8. Lead time in supply chain management is: → The time between placing an order and receiving it
9. In production scheduling, 'job shop' scheduling refers to: → Managing highly customized orders that follow unique routing through various work centers
10. What is 'condition-based maintenance' triggered by? → Actual measured equipment parameters exceeding defined thresholds
11. In Six Sigma, what is a 'Black Belt'? → A full-time Six Sigma practitioner trained to lead improvement projects
12. What is 'capacity planning' in production management? → Determining the production capacity needed to meet demand over time
13. A Safety Data Sheet (SDS) must contain how many sections under GHS? → 16
14. Which lean tool is used to identify the root cause of a problem by asking 'why' repeatedly? → 5 Whys
15. What is 'first pass yield' (FPY)? → The percentage of units completing a process without defects or rework
16. What is the difference between quality control (QC) and quality assurance (QA)? → QA focuses on process prevention; QC focuses on product inspection
17. What is 'poka-yoke' designed to do? → Prevent errors or make them immediately obvious
18. What does 3PL stand for? → Third-Party Logistics
19. What is predictive maintenance? → Maintenance based on actual equipment condition monitoring data
20. In the context of quality costs, 'appraisal costs' refer to: → Costs incurred to detect defects through inspection and testing
21. Gemba walks in lean manufacturing involve: → Going to the actual work floor to observe and understand processes firsthand
22. Vibration analysis in predictive maintenance is primarily used to detect which type of problem? → Mechanical imbalance, misalignment, and bearing wear
23. Design of Experiments (DOE) in Six Sigma is used to: → Systematically test multiple input variable combinations to optimize process outputs
24. What is Cpk used to measure? → Process capability relative to specification limits, accounting for centering
25. What does 'bottleneck' mean in a production system? → The operation with the lowest throughput that limits the entire system's output
26. What is a Gantt chart used for in production? → Visualizing the schedule of tasks over time on a timeline
27. In manufacturing maintenance, what does a Pareto analysis help identify? → The 20% of failure causes responsible for 80% of downtime
28. In Six Sigma, what is 'Y = f(X)' used to express? → The concept that process outputs (Y) are functions of process inputs and factors (X)
29. What does DMAIC stand for in Six Sigma? → Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control
30. What is the OSHA permissible exposure limit (PEL) for noise in the workplace? → 90 dBA as an 8-hour TWA