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 ([email protected]), 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.