The How-to Handbook for Any Style Situation What To Wear, Where:

The com- plexity in this plant-in any manufacturing plant-is mind-bog- gling if you contemplate it. Situations on the floor are always changing. How can I possibly control what goes on? How the hell am I supposed to know if any action in the plant is productive or non-productive toward making money? The answer is supposed to be in my briefcase, which is heavy in my hand. It's filled with all those reports and printouts and stuff that Lou gave me for the meeting. We do have lots of measurements that are supposed to tell us if we're productive. But what they really tell us are things like whether somebody down there "worked" for all the hours we paid him or her to work. They tell us whether the output per hour met our standard for the job. They tell us the "cost of prod- ucts," they tell us "direct labor variances," all that stuff. But how do I really know if what happens here is making money for us, or 49 whether we're just playing accounting games? There must be a connection, but how do I define it? I shuffle back down the stairs ...»