Sustainable Operations Group Glossary
Sustainable Operations Group Glossary
Behavioral Science: a branch of science (such as psychology, sociology, or anthropology) that deals primarily with human action and often seeks to generalize about human behavior in society. A branch of social science that seeks to systematically analyze and understand human behavior and its impact on various parts of society.
Continuous Change: ongoing effort to improve services, processes, etc.
Continual improvement: refers to general processes of improvement and encompassing "discontinuous" improvements—that is, many different approaches, covering different areas. The efforts taken and processes implemented to improve a system after stopping to carefully review and analyze shortcomings in progress.
Continuous improvement: A subset of continual improvement, with a more specific focus on linear, incremental improvement within an existing process. The ongoing improvement of a system based on the consistent identification of improvement opportunities, based on linear progression without stop.
Energy Management: Energy management is the process of tracking and optimizing on-site energy production and usage between relevant variables, ideally in concert, to achieve operational, economic and policy objectives.
Energy Management System: An energy management system is an interacting series of processes that enables an organization to systematically achieve and sustain energy management actions and energy performance improvements. It provides the processes and systems needed to incorporate energy management principles into daily operations as part of an organizational strategy for continually improving energy performance.
Emerging Technologies: a technology that is not yet commercialized but is likely to be commercialized and cost-effective for end-users (on a life-cycle cost basis) over the next few years.
Institutions: Institutions are collections of people and processes aligned to result in specific outcomes that benefit society. Institutions include sets of tacit rules—rules about how people treat one another, what can be said and what cannot be said, how decisions are made and justified, and so on. Institutions regulate behavior via socially approved mechanisms such as the rule of law and the accountable exercise of power.
Institutional Change: Institutional change is making changes in the ideas that govern collections of people and processes to result in a different or redefined outcome. As these ideas change, the rules and practices of the institution changes as well.
Market Pathways: Routes for new products to join the current market and create market transformation through identified opportunities in user interest and cultural momentum.
Strategic Energy Management: Strategic energy management is a long-term approach to energy efficiency that includes setting goals, tracking progress, and reporting results.