Ad Infinitum
[ad in-fuh-nahy-tuh m]
adverb
1) to infinity, endlessly: without limit
Dictionary.com
The owners of companies invented the concept of auditors to insure that the management was caring for the capital entrusted to their keeping. The inventors of ISO-9000 correctly realized that elevating their cause to the same level as making a profit would accomplish the quantum leap needed to catch the Japanese. They invented metrics that were given acronyms so they looked the same as financial metrics. The war for corporate resources and attention is on. Now that most western companies have quality that is on par with Japanese (We are now chasing the Koreans), the other functional company groups have joined the bandwagon by using metrics and auditors to vie for attention. This battle has resulted in an explosion of acronyms which is expanding ad infinitum. www.acronymfinder.com is now listing over 4 million acronyms and the number is growing daily.
It would be nice to think that a talented individual leading a company could find the complete set of metrics needed to eliminate waste. This is like suggesting that it is possible to enforce perfect compliance to the speed limit by using speed traps. We all know that the more severe penalties applied to reckless drivers make a bigger dent in improving public safety. In this era of proliferating acronyms, data gathering can look like an overwhelming task. It is easy to despair, if you fail to understand the principles behind Pareto analysis.