// glossary

Glossary

The terms this lab uses and, where it coined them, what they mean here. The terms coined in the author's Heuristics series - requisite variety in supply chain, the Variety Shortfall Test, symmetric, asymmetric and hybrid supply chains, the Outside Variance Ratio - are defined in his own glossary.

Auspex: Auspex is a prediction and forecasting harness for supply chain operations: zero-shot models behind one interface, exposed as an MCP server. See the project.
Automatiqa Lab: Automatiqa Lab is an open-source project lab by Aleks Sidorecs, publishing the tools he builds while experimenting with AI on the messy parts of real operations. About the lab.
Decision loop: A decision loop is the unit a process map leaves out: the point where work stops and waits on a judgement, who or what makes that judgement, how long the wait runs, and whether the call still holds under load. A process map records how work moves; the decision loop records where it stops and why, which is what determines whether a task can be handed to an agent. The phrase is occupied from three directions: decision cycle as the encyclopaedic term, Decision Loops as a 2024 consulting methodology for translating business problems into AI solutions, and The Decision Loop as a publication name. The sense here is narrower than any of them - one named point in a flow where work stops and waits on a judgement, and the properties of that point. Read the note.
Decision orchestration: Decision orchestration is a vendor category in supply chain planning: aligning demand, supply and finance so that one decision is made once and then expressed consistently across every system that touches it. It is sold in sales and operations planning terms by Board, LeanDNA and Cleo, and a 2026 paper extends it to orchestrating AI capabilities across global value chains. It is the nearest neighbour to Intelligent Orchestration and the easiest to confuse with it, because both carry decision and orchestration and both sit in supply chain. The line between them is who routes: decision orchestration makes a human decision consistent everywhere, and Intelligent Orchestration moves the routing itself off people. Read the manifesto.
Digital twin: A digital twin is not a 3D visualisation but a decision substrate: a machine-readable representation of inventory, capacity, demand signals, supplier state and constraints that answers what is happening without being asked. Read the manifesto.
FlowTwin: FlowTwin turns a recording of any operational process into editable process maps and runbooks that are adjustable, auditable and kept current. See the project.
Intelligence layer: The intelligence layer does not just observe, it composes: it assembles capabilities that already exist across the value chain into responses no individual planner would have constructed. Read the manifesto.
Intelligent Orchestration: Intelligent Orchestration, in supply chain and physical operations, is the argument that the coordination layer - human for twenty-three centuries - is moving to systems. The term is used here in that sense, not in the IT sense of orchestrating workloads or containers. Read the manifesto.
OODAA: OODAA is a self-improving agent loop: Observe, Orient, Decide, Act, and the second A, Adjust, the phase that makes an agent get smarter across runs instead of only faster within one. Some sources, including the Canadian Forces, expand OODAA as Observe, Orient, Decide, Act, Assess. The difference is not cosmetic: Assess judges the outcome of a cycle, while Adjust changes how the next cycle decides. See the project.
Operations Risk Monitor: Operations Risk Monitor is a multi-agent framework that watches operational risk across freight, fuel, labour, weather and geopolitics, then turns what it finds into briefings. See the project.
Orchestriq: Orchestriq is the kernel for agents that run real operations, where evals, approvals, earned autonomy and EU AI Act transparency live in the runtime so no module can opt out of them. See the project.
PPWR Compliance Screener: PPWR Compliance Screener checks supplier packaging declarations against Regulation (EU) 2025/40 for completeness and internal consistency. It is a screening tool, not a conformity assessment. See the project.
Procezio: Procezio is a guided canvas for finding automation opportunities in the way you already work, with an AI agent working alongside you on the same board. See the project.
Sample Trail: Sample Trail is a sample management workflow for agri-food and soft commodities that runs the quality approval decision on a physical sample, from dispatch to verdict. See the project.
Ship-Doc: Ship-Doc is shipment document control for physical trade: the pack checked against the shipping instruction, drafts approved by a named person, originals chased via Outlook. See the project.
Supply chain orchestration: Supply chain orchestration is the coordination of demand, supply, logistics and finance across a value chain from one view: the control tower generation, where software makes the state visible and people still route every decision. Intelligent Orchestration is the same function after the routing itself moves to systems. Read the manifesto.
The Edge: The Edge is the boundary where the intelligence system meets human judgment - supplier relationships, crisis calls, ethical sourcing, market entry, talent - the work that stays human once coordination moves to systems. Read the manifesto.