Appendix D — Glossary
Plain words and the textbook’s terms, one line each
Left: what we say in the room. Right: what the chapter calls it. The glossary grows by a few rows a week.
| Plain words | Textbook term | Week | One line |
|---|---|---|---|
| turning inputs into outputs | operations, production | 1 | the part of a firm that creates goods and services by transforming inputs into outputs (Heizer et al., 2023, Ch. 1) |
| the row of firms from raw material to customer | supply chain | 1 | the firms and steps that turn raw materials into a product in someone’s hands, linked by materials forward and orders backward |
| output per input | productivity | 1 | how much comes out for each unit that goes in; name the input, or the number means nothing |
| output per one input | single-factor productivity | 1 | output ÷ labor-hours, or ÷ kWh, or ÷ kg: one input at a time |
| output per all inputs in money | multifactor productivity, total factor productivity | 1 | output ÷ the sum of all inputs converted into money |
| how much better than last time | productivity growth | 1 | (new − old) ÷ old, in per cent |
| one person working one hour | person-hour, labor-hour | 1 | the unit of the labor input; two people for 45 minutes are 1.5 person-hours |
| people, machines, the way work is organised | productivity variables: labor, capital, management | 1 | the three groups of causes the chapter names for productivity; the sticky-note board sorts into them |
| effects a firm causes but does not pay for | external effects, externalities | 1 | from Latin externus, “outward”; the module looks at the environmental ones beside profit |
| the anonymous name on your papers | code name | 1 | a pioneer of operations management with a year, kept for the whole semester |