Automation Glossary B

B10: The useful life, calculated frequently in hours, of bearings or similar machine components at the actual loading or load factor experienced in actual operation.
Backplane: A wiring board, usually constructed as a printed circuit, used to provide the required connections between logic, memory and I/O modules.
Bar code: A series of horizontal stripes or bars of varying width which represent a string of characters that can be read by a bar code reader (scanner).
Bar code reader: A movable or fixed device that scans a bar code and interprets the combination of bars and spaces to record a transaction or a status.
Bar coding: An automatic identification technology that encodes data in a printed pattern of varying-width bars and spaces, in accordance with pre-determined rules.
Batch manufacturing or Batch processing: Producing lots or quantities of a product in order to achieve maximum "Economic Order Quantities" (EOQ). Some products must be batch processed to maximize use of equipment with long cycle times. However, it is incorrect to assume that batch processing is more economical than single piece production.
Battery backup: A battery that allows the memory to retain it's values when the PLC is turned off.
Bearing: A machine part in or on which a journal, shaft, axle, pin, or other part rotates, oscillates, or slides.
Belt conveyor: An endless fabric, rubber, plastic, leather, or metal belt operating over suitable drive, tail end and bend terminals and over belt idlers or slider bed for handling bulk materials, packages, or objects placed directly upon the belt.
Best practices: Standard, published operating methods found to produce the best performance and results in a given industry or organization.

Bill of materials (BOM): A listing of all the subassemblies, parts, and raw materials that go into a parent assembly. A list of components, ingredients, or materials needed to manufacture a product; the hierarchy of materials or components making up a product or subassembly including the proper ratios of quantities of each item.
Block diagram: (1) An illustration in which essential units of any system are drawn in the form of blocks and their relationship(s) to each other are indicated by appropriate interconnecting lines. (2) In computer programming or business/manufacturing process flow(s), a graphical representation of data processing or workflow within a system.
Bottleneck: A choke point in the manufacturing process as a result of line imbalances. A resource that constrains the flow of production, inventory movement or data in a system. In a free-flowing system, the first place to restrict throughput when demand is raised.
Brushless Servomotor: A class of servomotors which operates using electronic commutation of phase currents rather than electromechanical (brushes) commutation. Commutation is a function of rotor position. These motors typically have a permanent magnet rotor and wound stator.
Buffer: A machine station, in a multi-station system, that will automatically accept work in process (WIP) from upstream if the downstream stations are busy or if they have stopped operating. Buffers can increase the efficiency of a system.
Build to print: Fabricating, assembling and testing an assembly, or complete custom automation equipment based on the drawings and designs provided by a third-party such as a customer or outside engineering firm.
Builder: Machine assembler assigned to an individual project by the machinery or system supplier.
Bushing: (1) In machinery, a removable liner fixed in a bore to improve the bearing surface; (2) In chain, a renewable liner fixed in the barrel of a link, or center link, to provide an improved bearing surface; (3) In chain, a hollow cylinder used to space the sidebars and provide a bearing surface for the chain pin, and on which the rollers may or may not be mounted.
Buyer: An automation end-user (manufacturer who buys the automated machinery or system), an integrator (someone grouping machines into an automated system), or a team that procures the automated equipment.

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