He tells Al that he has three measurements that express the goal of making money perfectly well, but also permit him to develop operational rules for running the plant. They are "1) Throughput- the rate at which the system generates money through sales, 2) Inventory- all the money that the system has invested in purchasing things that it tends to sell, and 3) Operational Expense- all the money the system spends in order to turn inventory to throughput.".
Al starts thinking of these measurements and the conversation he had with Jonah at the airport. The questions Jonah asked about the robots were:.
1. Whether they had been able to sell more products as a result of having the robots, or in other words, "Did our throughput go up?".
2. Whether they had reduced the number of people on payroll. "Did our operational expense go down?".
3. If inventories had gone down?.
The goal that Jonah was trying to demonstrate, was to increase throughput while simultaneously reducing both inventory and operating expense.
After thinking about these questions and measurements Jonah gave him, Al arrives at work and pulls in Lou, his accountant, to talk about these questions. They look over the sales ever since getting the robots and find that sales haven't increased. They also call in Stacey, who manages inventory control, and find out that ever since getting the robots, they had to project them as being more efficient, which led to a surplus of parts that weren't being consumed. Al figures out that the robots were producing parts that they don't need or have product orders for. The bottom line was for the workers to give the robots more to do, which released more materials, increased inventory, and the costs of those parts were to go down. Did it though? No, because they have added carrying costs which is an operational expense.
Now understanding the overall foundation, Al decides to get on a plane and meet with Jonah again one morning before he leaves to talk about the next step Al should take.
