Glossary
General and Operations Manager Terms & Vocabulary
15 essential general and operations manager terms with plain-English definitions: the vocabulary you’ll hear in training and on day one.
Key general and operations manager vocabulary
These 15 terms come up constantly in general and operations manager training, on the job and in interviews. Knowing them helps you follow instructions, document accurately and sound prepared.
- Bottleneck
- Step that slows everything.
- Capacity
- Maximum output.
- Continuous improvement
- Ongoing small changes.
- Gemba walk
- Going to where work happens.
- KPI
- Key performance indicator.
- Labor cost
- Spending on wages.
- Lean
- Eliminating waste.
- Operating budget
- Plan for spending.
- P&L
- Profit and loss.
- Root cause
- Underlying reason for a problem.
- Six Sigma
- Reducing defects.
- SOP
- Standard operating procedure.
- Span of control
- Number of direct reports.
- Throughput
- Output over time.
- Variance
- Difference from plan.
Practice these terms
Test yourself with the free General and Operations Manager practice test: it includes vocabulary questions built from this list. For a complete course, see General and Operations Manager training.
Browse terms from every career in our career glossary.