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Stacey Potazenik
Lou is Alex’s plant controller (chief accountant). Although Lou is both intelligent and experienced, Alex notes that he initially makes the same wrong assumptions as anyone else about why the plant fails (poor workers, labor union interference, and so on), suggesting that those flawed assumptions are ubiquitous among businesspeople. However, when Alex and his staff begin implementing Jonah’s new ideas, Lou quickly realizes that the traditional corporate metrics he uses to measure the plant’s performance are deeply flawed and outdated. Even after adopting Jonah’s guiding metrics of throughput, inventory, and operating expense, Lou recognizes that their cost accounting measures provide inaccurate data. As a result, Lou spends much of his time developing better ways to calculate expenses and measure efficiency, even going against corporate guidelines to do so. When Alex becomes division manager, Lou asks Alex to make him his division controller so that he can reform the division’s cost accounting methods and implement a new, more accurate system for all of their plants. Alex grants Lou’s request, and they prepare to take over the division together.
Lou Quotes in The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement
The The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement quotes below are all either spoken by Lou or refer to Lou. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 36
Quotes
“Everywhere, improvement was interpreted as almost synonymous to cost savings. People are concentrating on reducing operating expenses as if it’s the most important measurement.”
“Not even that,” Bob interrupts. “We were busy reducing costs that didn’t have any impact on reducing operating expenses.”
“Correct,” Lou continues. “But the important thing is that we, in our plant, have switched to regard throughput as the most important measurement. Improvement for us is not so much to reduce costs but to increase throughput.”
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
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Lou Quotes in The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement
The The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement quotes below are all either spoken by Lou or refer to Lou. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 36
Quotes
“Everywhere, improvement was interpreted as almost synonymous to cost savings. People are concentrating on reducing operating expenses as if it’s the most important measurement.”
“Not even that,” Bob interrupts. “We were busy reducing costs that didn’t have any impact on reducing operating expenses.”
“Correct,” Lou continues. “But the important thing is that we, in our plant, have switched to regard throughput as the most important measurement. Improvement for us is not so much to reduce costs but to increase throughput.”
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
