Glossary of Terms Used on the Site

Search this page for definitions of terms and jargon used on A Management Consultant @ Large:

• Business Model - a conceptual description of a company's purpose, offerings, strategies, infrastructure, organizational structures, trading practices and operational processes and policies.
• CAD - Computer-Aided Design, usually referring to graphical design, but also including concept development and image management.
• CAE - Computer-aided engineering is the use of information technology for supporting engineers in tasks such as analysis, simulation, design, manufacture, planning and simulation, diagnosis and repair.
• CAM - Computer-Aided Manufacturing, software tools that assist engineers and machinists in manufacturing or prototyping product components by generating three-dimensional (3D) models using CAD.
• CDO - Collateralized Debt Obligation, a security made up of a collection of fixed-income assets backed by collateral. A mortgage-backed security, for example, which is made up of a bundle of mortgages backed by real estate holdings, is a kind of CDO.
  
• Channel of Trade - An established market mechanism for distributing and selling products that follows a well-understood set of merchandising, settlement and delivery policies.
• Cloud (Internet) - A common depiction of the Internet as the place where information packets reside, regardless of how they got there.
• CPD or cPDm - Collaborative Product Development or Collaborative Product Definition Management is a business strategy and method for enabling work teams to cooperate in product design and development across the extended enterprise.
• Credit Default Swap (CDS) - A credit default swap is a contract between two counterparties, whereby the "buyer" or "fixed rate payer" pays periodic payments to the "seller" or "floating rate payer" in exchange for the right to a payoff if there is a default or "credit event" in respect of a third party or "reference entity". This financial derivative was widely used as a hedge against risky mortgage portfolios; however, it proved to be a high-risk instrument when mortgage failures climbed sharply in 2008.
• Distribution - The collection of processes required to move product from a stocking point to a customer delivery location. These processes include carrier qualification, selection and contract management; product packaging, bundling and handling; and transportation management.
  
• Distribution Network Strategy - A plan for positioning and purposing manufacturing, packaging, storage and distribution centers designed to balance competing objectives for customer service, logistics costs and supply security. Service objectives, which vary by market and product segment, typically involve: rapid fulfillment of orders; assurance of product availability; product protection; transaction accuracy; and frameworks of trading agreements and processes that simplify transactions and reinforce trust.
• EAMS (Enterprise Asset Management Systems) - Applications that focus on the operational management and maintenance of a company’s facilities and equipment
• Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 - Commonly called the "bailout plan," the bill granting unusual authority to the US Treasury Secretary to deal with the liquidity crisis of September and October, 2008.
  
• Enterprise Architecture - The description of the current and/or future structure and behavior of an organization's processes, information systems, personnel and organizational sub-units, aligned with the organization's core goals and strategic direction
• Extended Enterprise - A loosely coupled, self-organizing network of firms that combine their outputs to provide product and service offerings. Firms in the extended enterprise may operate independently or cooperatively.
• Fast Food- See QSR (Quick Service Restaurant)
• Folksonomy - A user-driven approach to defining taxonomies (used on this site, for example) that allows content contributors to describe their content with tags or labels that become part of a self-organizing search index on the site where the content resides.
• Fulfillment - The process of filling orders and distributing products to customers.
  
• IT - Information Technology - The study, design, development, implementation, support or management of computer-based information systems, particularly software applications and computer hardware.
• IWMS (Integrated Workplace Management Solution) - An enterprise platform that supports the planning, design, management, utilization and disposal of an organization's location-based assets
• LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) - A building rating system developed by U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) that is used to assess the impact of the design on the environment.
  
• Limited Menu - The primary merchandising strategy of quick service restaurants to hold in check product assortment and customization in order to maintain high throughput and quality control.
• Mark-to-Market - Accounting rule by which corporations may be required to restate assets on their balance sheets to accurately reflect their current market values.
• Mortgage-backed Security (MBS) - A security issued by a mortgage lender composed of a collection of collateralized mortgage loans.
• Node or nexus - a point in a network where information, product, services and/or money is exchanged. A critical element of network strategy is the determination of where to locate nodes and what functions to assign to them.
  
• Parametric Model - A parametric model is a set of related mathematical equations in which alternative scenarios are defined by changing the assumed values of a set of fixed coefficients (parameters).
• PDMA Glossary - (PDMA.org)
• PLM - Product lifecyle management - An integrated business approach to manage the creation and dissemination of product data throughout an enterprise.
• Proof of Concept - The simplest possible program that will answer a question that you have about the tasks at hand.
• QSR - Quick Service Restaurant,. Often called a Fast Food Restaurant, a QSR is a specific type of restaurant characterized by its limited cuisine and by minimal table service. Food served in fast food restaurants typically caters to a Western-style diet and is offered from a limited menu; is cooked in bulk in advance and kept hot; is finished and packaged to order; and is usually available ready to take away, though seating may be provided. Fast food restaurants are usually part of a restaurant chain or franchise operation, which provisions standardized ingredients and/or partially prepared foods and supplies to each restaurant through controlled supply channels.
• Retail Lifecycle Management - The application of PLM techniques to the management of information about retail stores, their designs, components and sites.
• RFID - Radio frequency identification, an automatic identification method, relying on storing and remotely retrieving data using devices called RFID tags or transponders, used for locating and identifying objects.
• RLM - See Retail Lifecycle Management
• Separability - The degree to which the operating costs of a business unit or business function are independent of the remainder of the business.
• Service (SOA) - in process automation, a discretely defined set of contiguous and autonomous business or technical functionality.
• Service-orientation - In systems architecture, a design goal of automating logic in the form of services as a means of creating systems in efficient, reusable modules.
• SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) - an information modeling approach whereby functionality is decomposed into small, distinct units (services), which can be distributed over a network and then combined and reused as needed to create business applications.
• Stocking point - A place, such as a warehouse or distribution center, where product is held before being distributed to customers or converted into an assembly, compound, ingredient or finished product.
  
• Supply chain management - Planning, implementing and controlling processes, business policies, infrastructure and information related to the flow of materials used in the production and distribution of goods and related services.
• Syndication of Content - The practice of making the content of a website available in such a manner that many other parties can pick it up via the Internet, automatically and as often as needed.
• TARP - Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP), under which the Secretary of the Treasury would be authorized to purchase, insure, hold, and sell a wide variety of financial instruments, particularly those that are based on or related to residential or commercial mortgages issued prior to March 14, 2008.
• Web 2.0 - The second generation of the worldwide web, characterized by collaborative on-line communities, network-hosted applications, tagging ("folksonomy"), content syndication, and user-contributed content ("wikis").
• Wiki - A collaborative website which can be directly edited by anyone with access to it.
• Workflow - a reliably repeatable pattern of activity enabled by a systematic organization of resources, defined roles and mass, energy and information flows, into a work process that can be documented and learned.
• Zigbee - a communication protocol for wireless personal networks that is designed for secure, low-volume, energy-efficient radio frequency applications, such as locating and tracking assets in a warehouse or trailer.

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