The other day, a mill manager contacted us to say that his boss was always finding fault with him when the oil loss was on the high side. His boss, the General Manager, was a planter by profession but was vested with the mandate to monitor mill operations as well. As the General Manager was always finding fault with the mill manager and turned a deaf ear to his explanations, he was contemplating on resigning and taking up a job overseas. We told to him to hold on and find out a way to make him understand the factors involved. This could be a tough job as another factor called ego also played a vital role in this. If the General Manager said that the total mill process loss should have been below 1.5%, it should have been applicable in all the mills. He had a point there, but not a valid one as there were other factors he had overlooked.  As  this  issue  is  widespread  among the organisations, where the plantation managers take charge of the mills, we thought Perhaps we should make some clarifications for the planters to carefully consider the relevant reasoning behind the rational that oil losses are a function of the oil extraction ratio. Surprisingly,  even the mill engineers are not aware of this simple truth.  In order to justify this statement, some definitions would be of help.