Throughput
Etymology
A plain compound of "through" and "put" — literally, how much is put through — coined in engineering and later spread to computing and operations. Its bluntness is the point: it counts finished output, not intentions. The word rewards results over motion.
noun · /THROO-put/
The amount of work, output, or material a system successfully processes in a given time.
What it names
It measures real productive flow rather than effort or activity, so you judge a process by what actually comes out the far end.
Example
Adding a second oven doubled the kitchen’s throughput on busy nights.
Related idea
Throughput is the flow that gets out; a bottleneck is the narrow point that caps it. Raising throughput almost always means finding and widening the bottleneck, not speeding up parts that were never the constraint.