Environmental testing and associated industry terms
This glossary is an informal aid and therefore un-audited.
| HALT | Highly Accelerated Life Testing |
| HAT | Highly Accelerated Testing (similar to HALT but specific to some companies/industries) |
| HASS | Highly Accelerated Stress Screening |
| AGREE | Department of Defense Advisory Group on Reliability of Electronic Equipment |
| BEST | Board Electronic Strife Test |
| ESS | Environmental Stress Screening |
| HASA | Highly Accelerated Stress Audit |
| LATENT Fault | A hidden defect yet to emerge, and that may only emerge in operational service |
| LN2 | Liquid Nitrogen |
| GN2 | Gaseous Nitrogen |
| NDT | Non Destructive Testing |
| VLSI | Very Large Scale Integration (micro chip terminology) |
| SMT | Surface Mount Technology (small electronic component mounting technique) |
| PTH / NPTH | Plated Through Hole (circuit board design feature) / Not-Plated Through Hole |
| POS | Proof of Screen |
| UUT | Unit Under Test (term used mainly in Aerospace and electronics) |
| EOL | End of Line (usually production line) |
| DVT | Design Validation Testing (aka just DV) |
| PVT | Process Validation Testing (aka just PV) |
| DUT | Device Under Test (semiconductor origins) |
| Torr | 133.3224 pascals [1.33324 mbar] used as measurement of vacuum.* |
* Please consult a recognised & approved standard for exact conversions.
Other occasionally encountered more general terms.
Many terms exist with entirely different meanings in different industries & technologies e.g. URL in controls engineering generally refers to UPPER RANGE LIMIT. In computing URL generally means UNIFORM RESOURCE LOCATOR.
Most of these terms are not formally defined. They are common use or custom and practice terms that may be interpreted differently in different technology sectors/industries.
| URL | Upper Range Limit. (instrumentation term) |
| URL | Uniform Resource Locator (computing term) |
| TPE | Total Probable Error. (instrumentation term) |
| CPI | Chemical Processing Industry |
| PCI | Process Control Instrumentation |
| EPIC | Engineer Procure Install Commission |
| EBIT | Earnings Before Interest & Tax (financial) |
| CAGR | Compound Annual Growth Rate (financial) |
| CAAGR | Compound Average Annual Growth Rate (financial) |
| SPC | Sales Profit Centre (financial) |
| FSD | Full Scale Deflection (instrumentation term) |
| MRO | Maintenance Repair/Replace Overhaul (manufacturing industry) |
| OTIF | On Time In Full (usually refers to goods delivery although can apply to other services) |
| BOOT | Build Operate Own Transfer (contractual description) |
| BOT | Build Own Transfer (project financing structure) |
| TLA | Three Letter Acronym 🙂 |
| SCADA | Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (controls and instrumentation industry) |
| HMI | Human Machine Interface (controls industry) |
| MIP | Molecular Imprinted Polymers |
| FBO | Fixed base operators (military term?) |
| CBT | Computer based training |
| RONA | Return On Net Assets (financial) |
| ROTC | Return On Total Capital (financial) |
If your definition disagrees with any of these, please let us know.