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Product:
A Product is the end result of an activity of some kind or another which can be exchanged against something of value, mostly money. It is something that others consider as valuable and for which they are willing to give something of comparable value in exchange.
The term Product doesn’t only refer to physical objects like books, cars, lawnmowers etc. while these are the most evident form.
Rather intangible things would be counted under Product as well as long as they are the result of a purposeful activity.
For example a well running
computer network, protected from virus attacks and crashes
would be the Product of a competent system administrator. A
happy customer who got his question satisfactorily answered
would be the Product of a support staff and so
on.
Production, then, is the
activity directed to creating a Product. To be effective
production has to be organized and coordinated.
There are people who manage to look very busy the whole day, running around, doing this, doing that. But if you check what their actual product of the day’s work was you might find little or nothing at all of value. Often they even increase the workload of their co-workers by their uncoordinated or faulty actions. These people were not producing but doing something else.
[
Product
comes from
Latin producere,
productum
= to bring forth, draw
out; pro-
= forth
and ducere
= to bring,
lead]
