When you play a game you think about "How am I going to win?" Companies do the same. A companies plan to win is called a strategy.
A companies "core" business is what it does that is most important. This is what they want to focus their energy on. For example, for UAEU teaching and research are "core" activities. Security, cleaning the buildings, maintenance, scheduling classes, etc. are all outsourced. UAEU wants to focus on its core.
The book points out that supply chain is a process... it's a systems approach. Every company has:
Inputs that go through a transformation process that become outputs. Evaluating each step in the process provides feedback. Think of it this way: As a student you are an input. We teach you. You grow. You change. When you graduate we hope you are a different person. You will be the output of our university. We put you in a capstone course and give you an internship as part of ways to measure if you have learned what we hoped you would learn. This is our feedback. As faculty we ask, "How can we make our graduates better?" Good companies are always doing the same thing.
The term "sustainability" means it is something that can be done for years and years.