Measurements are an integral part of the testing process. In manufacturing processes, they provide an indication of how the final product will turn out. If the temperature is too high, resins will become too fragile. If raw materials are left in the open air too long, the loaves of bread won’t have the right texture.
Note the variation that was acceptable at the most commercially successful, and highest quality, studio at the time. And yet they still measured raw output. Other studios enforced a more inflexible production quota (bean counters!), and their work suffered as a result.
Measurement is an indirect means of testing the velocity and quality of a process, and is as valid for software development as it is for animation.