Free Alongside Ship (FAS)

A shipping contract term indicating that the seller must place the goods alongside the ship at the named port and be liable for all charges and risks prior to placement. The seller must clear the goods for export. This changed in the 2000 version of the Incoterms. Suitable for maritime transport only.

Free on Board (FOB)

Contractual terms between a buyer and a seller define where title transfer takes place.

Free Time

The period of time allowed for the removal or accumulation of cargo before charges become applicable.

Free Trade Zone (FTZ)

Also known as an export processing zone (EPZ), one or more special areas of a country where some normal trade barriers, such as tariffs and quotas, are eliminated and bureaucratic requirements are lowered in hopes of attracting new business and foreign investments. Free trade zones can be defined as labor-intensive manufacturing centers that involve the import of raw materials or components and the export of factory products.

Freezing inventory balances

In most cycle counting programs, the term 'freezing' refers to copying the current on-hand inventory balance into the cycle count file. This may also be referred to as taking a snapshot of the inventory balance. It rarely means that the inventory is actually frozen in a way that prevents transactions from occurring.

Freight

Goods are being transported from one place to another.

Freight-All-Kinds (FAK)

An approach to rate making whereby the rate is based only on the shipment weight and distance; widely used in TOFC service.

Freight Bill

The carrier's invoice for transportation charges applicable to a freight shipment.

Freight Carriers

Companies that haul freight are also called 'for-hire' carriers. Methods of transportation include trucking, railroads, airlines, and sea-borne shipping.

Freight Charge

The rate established for transporting freight.

Freight Collect

The freight and charges are to be paid by the consignee.

Freight Consolidation

The act of combining individual shipments into a single lot in order to reduce costs or improve transport equipment utilization is called consolidation. Consolidation can take a variety of forms, such as by customer, geography, shipping lane, or schedule. Consolidation may occur at the shipping facility or may be a service of a third party.

Freight Forwarder

An organization that provides logistics services as an intermediary between the shipper and the carrier, typically on international shipments, is called a freight forwarder. Freight forwarders provide the ability to respond quickly and efficiently to changing customer and consumer demands, as well as international shipping (import/export) requirements.

Freight Forwarders Institute

The Freight Forwarder Industry Association.

Freight Prepaid

The freight and charges are to be paid by the consignor.

FRM

Floor-Ready Merchandise

Fronthaul

The first leg of the truck trip involves hauling a load or several loads to targeted destinations.

Frozen Zone

In forecasting, this is the period in which no changes can be made to scheduled work orders based on changes in demand. The use of a frozen zone provides stability in the manufacturing schedule.

FTE

Full-Time Equivalents

FTL

Full Truckload

FTP

File Transfer Protocol

FTZ

Free Trade Zone

Fulfillment

The act of fulfilling a customer order includes order management, picking, packaging, and shipping.

Fulfillment Agent

May be designated as an agent to plan, schedule, or control the process of executing the logistics chain.

Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA)

This is a method of selling products on Amazon, where Amazon fulfills the orders on behalf of the seller. Sellers coordinate with Amazon to send inventory to Amazon Fulfillment Centers (FCs).

Full container load (FCL)

For this type of ocean-based shipment, all cargo found within a given container belongs to a single party rather than packing goods from multiple shippers together.

Full Container load (FCL)

A term used when goods occupy an entire container.

Full Mission-Capable (FMC)

Used in DoD PBL to describe the material condition of any piece of military equipment, aircraft, or training device, indicating that it can perform all of its missions. Also called FMC. See also deadline; mission-capable; partial mission-capable; partial mission-capable maintenance; partial mission-capable supply.

Full-Service Leasing

An equipment-leasing arrangement that includes a variety of services to support leased equipment (i.e., motor carrier tractors).

Full-time Equivalents (FTE)

Frequently, organizations make use of contract and temporary employees. Please convert contract, part-time, and temporary employees to full-time equivalents. For example, two contract employees who worked full-time for six months and a half-time regular employee would constitute 1.5 full-time equivalents. 1 FTE = 2000 hours per year.

Full truckload (FTL)

This is a type of freight shipping that leverages semi-trucks, where the entire cargo load of the truck is a single shipment for a single customer.

Full Truckload (FTL)

A term that defines a shipment which occupies at least one complete truck trailer or allows for no other shipper's goods to be carried at the same time.

Fully Allocated Cost

The variable cost associated with a particular unit of output, plus an allocation of common cost.

FunctionalAcknowledgment (FA)

A specific EDI Transaction Set (997) sent by the recipient of an EDI message to confirm the receipt of data, but with no indication as to the recipient application's response to the message. The FA will confirm that the message contained the correct number of lines, etc., via control summaries but does not report on the validity of the data.

Functional Group

Part of the hierarchical structure of EDI transmissions, a Functional Group contains one or more related Transaction Sets, preceded by a Functional Group header and followed by a Functional Group trailer.

Functional Metric

A number resulting from an equation shows the impact of one or more parts of a functional/department process. This is also known as a results measure, as the metric measures the results of one aspect of the business.

Functional Silo

A view of an organization where each department or functional group operates independently of other groups within the organization. Each group is referred to as a 'silo.

Fungible

A fungible item is one that could be exchanged with another equal part or quantity with no significant difference and still satisfy the obligation. A commodity is a fungible item.

Future Order

A purchase or customer order that is placed for delivery at a time beyond the normal order cycle.