the best way to explain business equations of state is to use an example for our example we shall use an electronics company that makes calculators we decide to evaluate the impact of return material authorizations rmas on business we know that rmas represent a returned product and thus a loss of revenue under typical operating conditions such loss of revenue would be incorporated into a profit and loss report this is fine for a strict accounting report but it does not deal directly with the impact such rmas make on other divisions and overall company performance in operational terms what is overlooked is the fact that an rma could represent a u201c defect u201d of various sorts for many u201c performance u201d parameters indicative of the company 39 s overall performance thus to research what the impact of an rma would be on a more substantive level one would develop an equation of state for describing the impact of such events by doing so the impact of rmas on marketing engineering qa policy reliability requirements design rules applications support and other areas may be more fully understood let us execute a cursory review of what parameters might be involved in this hypothetical rma procedure keep in mind this list is for demonstration purposes only and is not complete none the less this exercise will demonstrate the process that would be used to develop a business equation of state l direct loss of revenue ts loss of man hours in sales support tm loss of man hours in manufacturing.