Productivity
Productivity is a concept from
engineering. It is the amount of work (in terms of goods produced or services rendered) produced during a period of time. It is related to the concept of
efficiency from
economics, which is the amount of output produced relative to the amount of resources (time and money) that go into the production.
It benefits a business to improve productivity, which over time lowers cost and (hopefully) improves ability to compete and make profit.
Many economists attribute the economic expansion of the 1990s to the massive increase in worker productivity that occurred during that period.