WIP

Often used in Industry and Manufacturing – WIP stands for

WORK IN PROGRESS

WIP or Work In Progress is used to commonly described products or items that are part way through the manufacturing process, but have not been completed yet.

By way of an example a car that is part way down the manufacturing line but has not had its seats or wheels added yet would be classed as Work In Progress or WIP.

WIP comes in different guises, you can also find with certain products what appears to be complete products classed as WIP, for example if a sweet manufacturer had a large stock of only one flavour of a range of Jelly Babies that would be classed as work in progress, pending production of the other flavours required to go in a mixed packet of them.

Within a business a large amount of WIP is often viewed as a sign of an inefficient operation, under the principles of lean manufacturing WIP or Work In progress should ideally have a low dwell time and be turned into good stock as soon as possible, a large value of WIP is a highly inefficient and expensive use of working capital which is becoming harder to obtain in industry every year.