| A | B |
|---|
| Production | The creation of goods and services. |
| Operations management (OM) | Activities that relate to the creation of goods and services through the transformation of inputs into outputs. |
| Management process | The application of planning, organizing, staffing, leading and controlling to the achieve of objectives. |
| Pure service | A service that does not include a tangible product, like counseling. |
| Service sector | That segment of the economy that includes trade, financial, lodging, education, legal, medical, and other professional occupations. |
| Productivity | The ratio of outputs (goods and services) divided by one or more inputs (like labor, capital, and management). |
| Single-factor productivity | Indicates the ratio of one resource (input) to the goods and services produced (outputs). |
| Multifactor productivity | Indicates the ratio of many or all resources (inputs) to the goods and services produced (outputs). |
| Productivity variables | The three factors critical to productivity improvement -- labor, capital, and the arts and science of management. |
| Knowledge society | A society which much of the labor force has migrated from manual work to work based on knowledge. |
| Maquiladoras | Mexican factories located along the US-Mexico border that receive preferential tariff treatment. |
| World Trade Organization (WTO) | An international organization that helps promote world trade by lowering barriers to the free flow of goods across borders. |
| NAFTA | North American Free Trade Agreement, a trade agreement between Canada, US, and Mexico. |
| European Union (EU) | A union of 15 European countries with 13 more countries preparing to enter. |
| Mission | The purpose or rationale for an organization's existence. |
| Strategy | How an organization expects to achieve its missions and goals. |
| Competitive advantage | The creation of a unique advantage over competitors. |
| Differentiation | To distinquish the offerings of the organization in any way that the customer perceives as adding value. |
| Experience differentiation | To engage the customer with the product through imaginative use of the five sense, so the customer experiences the product. |
| Low-cost leadership | Achieving maximum value as perceived by the customer. |
| Response | That set of values related to rapid, flexible, and reliable performance. |
| Operations decisions | The strategic decisions of OM are product design, quality, process design, location selection, layout design, human resources and job design, supply-chain management, inventory, scheduling, and maintenance. |
| PIMS | Profit impact of market strategy, a program established in cooperation with GE to identify characteristics of high-return-on-investment firms. |
| SWOT analysis | Strength, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats, looks for both the internal and external. |
| Critical success factors (CSF) | Those activities or factors that are key to achieving competitive advantage. |
| Activity map | A graphical link of competitive advantage, CSFs and supporting activities. |
| International business | A firm that engages in cross-border transactions. |
| Multinational corporation (MNC) | A firm that has extensive involvement in international business, owning or controlling facilities in more than one country. |
| International strategy | Global markets are penetrated using exports and licenses. |
| Multidomestic strategy | Operating decisions are decentralized to each country to enhance local responsiveness. |
| Global strategy | Operating decisions are centralized and headquarters coordinates the standardization and learning between facilities. |
| Transnational strategy | Combines the benefits of global-scale efficiencies with the benefits of local responsiveness. |
| Product design | The selection, definition, and design of products. |
| Product-by-value analysis | A listing of products in descending order of their individual dollar contribution to the firm,as well as the total annual dollar contribution of the product. |
| Brainstorming | A team technique to generate creative ideas on a particular subject. Ideas are not reviewed until after the brainstorming session is over. |
| Quality function deployment (QFD) | A process for determining customer requirements (wants) and translating them in the attributes (how) that each functional area can understand and act on. |
| House of quality | A part of the quality function deployment process that utilizes a planning matrix to relate customer "wants" to "how" the firm is going to meet those wants. |
| Product development teams | Teams charged with moving market requirements for a product to achieving product success. |
| Concurrent engineering | Use of participating teams in design and engineering activities. |
| Manufacturability and value engineering | Activites that help improve a product's design, production, maintainability and use. |
| Robust design | A design that can be produced to requirments even with unfavorable conditions in the production process. |
| Modular design | Parts or components of a product are subdivided into modules that are easily interchanged or replaced. |
| Computer-aided design (CAD) | Interactive use of a computer to develop and document a product. |
| Design for Manufacture and Assembly (DFMA) | Software that allows designers to look at the effect of design on manufacturing of the product. |
| 3-D object modeling | An extension of CAD that builds small prototypes. |
| Standard for the Exchange of Product Data (STEP) | Provides a format allowing the electronic transmittal of three dimensional data. |
| Computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) | The use of information technology to control machinery. |
| Virtual reality | A visual form of communication in which images substitute for reality and typically allow the user to respond interactively. |
| Value analysis | A review of successful products that takes place during the production process. |
| Green manufacturing | Sensitivity to a wide variety of environmental issues in production processes. |
| Time-based competition | Competition based on time; rapidly developing products and moving them into market. |
| Joint ventures | Firms establishing joint ownership to pursue new products or markets. |
| Alliances | Cooperative agreements that allow firms to remain independent, but that pursue strategies consistent with their individual missions. |
| Engineering drawing | A drawing that shows the dimensions, tolerances, materials, and finishes of a component. |
| Bill of material (BOM) | A listing of the components, their description, and the quantity of each required to make one unit of a product. |
| Make-or-buy decision | The choosing between producing a component or a service and purchasing it from an outside source. |
| Group technology | A product and component coding system that specifies the type of processing and the parameters of the processing; it allows similar products to be grouped. |
| Assembly drawing | An expanded view of the product, usually via a three dimensional or isometric drawing. |
| Assembly chart | A graphic means of identifying how components flow into subassemblies and ultimately into a final product. |
| Route sheet | A listing of the operations necessary to produce the component with the material specified in the bill of material. |
| Work order | An instruction to make a given quantity of a particular item, usually to a given schedule. |
| Engineering change notice (ECN) | A correction or modification of an engineering drawing or bill of material. |
| Configuration management | A system by which a product's planned and changing components are accurately identified and for which control and accountibility of change are maintained. |
| Moment-of-truth | In the service industry, that crucial moment between the service provider and the customer that exemplifies, enhances, or detracts from the customer's expectations. |
| Mean time between failures (MTBF) | The expected time between a repair and the next failure of a component, machine, process, or product. |
| Redundancy | The use of components in parallel to raise reliabilities. |
| Project organization | An organization formed to ensure that programs (projects) receive the proper management and attention. |
| Work breakdown structure (WBS) | Dividing a project into more and more detailed components. |
| Gnatt charts | Planning charts used to schedule resources and allocate time. |
| Program evaluation and review technique (PERT) | A project management technique that employs three time estimates for each activity. |
| Critical path | The computed longest path or paths through the network. |
| Activity-on-node (AON) | A network diagram in which nodes designate activities. |
| Activity-on-Arrow (AOA) | A network diagram in which arrows designate activities. |
| Dummy activities | An activity having no time, inserted into the network to maintain the logic of the network. |
| Slack time | Free time for an activity |
| Total slack | Time shared among more than one activity. |
| Free slack | Time associated with a single activity. |
| Optimistic slack | The best activity completion time that could be obtained in a PERT network. |
| Pessimistic slack | The worst activity time that could be expected in a PERT network. |
| Most likely time | The most probable time to complete an activity in a PERT network. |
| Beta distribution probability | A mathemtical distribution that may describe the activity time estimate distributions in a PERT network. |
| Jidoka | Stop everything when something goes wrong. |
| Quality circles or Small Group Improvement Activities | A group of volunteers who meet regularly to discuss their function and problems they're encountering, to try to find solutions. |
| Long run | The period of time that all inputs can be fully adjusted. |
| Fixed costs | Costs that continue even if operations are temporarily shut down. They remain constant at various levels of output. |
| Variable costs | Costs that change with levels of output. |
| Profit | Difference between total revenues and total costs. |
| Breakeven point | The level of output where profit equals zero; total revenues = total costs. |
| Total revenue | Unit price * output quantity. |
| Contribution margin | Difference between revenue/unit and variable cost/unit. |
| Cost equalization analysis (CEA) | Determines the quantity of production at which the cost for one decision alternative equals the cost for another, a comparion between two or more costs to determine when they are equal. |
| Incremental analysis | Compares the differences among alternatives being considered. |
| Direct material cost | The cost of the materials included in the finished product. |
| Direct labor cost | The cost of the labor used in producing the output. |
| Operations overhead costs | All those costs associated with operations except direct material and direct labor. |
| Operations cost, cost of goods produced | Direct material cost + direct labor cost + operations overhead costs |
| Job costing | Product costing where costs can be allocated to a specific job or product. |
| Process costing | Product costing where costs are gathered for a period of time and allocated equally to the units of output produced for the period. |
| Budget | A statement of expected performance in some quantitive measure for future periods. Used for both planning and control. |
| Cost control | Concerned with maintaining costs in accordance with established standards. |
| Cost reduction | Challenges standards used in cost control to achieve lower costs. |
| Cost profile | The expression of every cost element as a percentage of budget to indicate where cost reduction efforts should start or could be most successful. |
| Make or buy decision | When to make the input or when to buy it. This decision is usually based on cost. |
| Standardization | Uniformity in components, work methods, procedures, equipment, and processes. |
