N

NCR Non Conformance Report

Noise In the context of quality management, noise is essentially variability. For example, if you are making ketchup, noise in the process comes from variations in the quality of incoming tomatoes, in changes in ambient temperature and humidity, in variations in machinery performance, in variations in the quality of human factors, etc.

Nominal Unordered categories which indicate membership or non membership with no implication of quantity, i.e., assembly area number one, part numbers, etc.

Nominal group technique Technique used to encourage creative thinking and new ideas, but is more controlled than brainstorming. Each member of a group writes down his or her ideas and then contributes one to the group pool. All contributed ideas are then discussed and prioritized.

Non Value Added Activity An activity performed in a process that does not add value to the output product or service, which may or may not have a valid business reason for being performed.

Non-Conformance Product or material which does not conform to the customer specifications and/or requirements. Sometimes used interchangeably with non-conformity.
Non-Conforming Product Product which does not conform to the customer specifications and/or requirements. Same as Non-Conformance.

Non-Conformity Nonfulfilment of a specified requirement. Sometimes used interchangeably with non-conformance.

Non-critical code analysis .(IEEE) (1) Examines software elements that are not designated safety-critical and ensures that these elements do not cause a hazard. (2) Examines portions of the code that are not considered safety-critical code to ensure they do not cause hazards. Generally, safety-critical code should be isolated from non-safety-critical code. This analysis is to show this isolation is complete and that interfaces between safety-critical code and non-safety-critical code do not create hazards.

NORMAL DISTRIBUTION A continuous, symmetrical density function characterized by a bell shaped curve, e.g., distribution of sampling averages.

np chart A control chart indicating the number of defective units in a given sample.

Null hypothesis is typically a hypothesis of no difference. That is why the word "null" in "null hypothesis" is used -- it is the hypothesis of no difference. Despite the "null" in "null hypothesis," there are occasions when the parameter is not hypothesized to be 0. For example the null hypothesis may be that the parameter is equal to a specific value.