Enemy Number One --Dickeson

Sigoloff, Buck, Palmisano and printers in general are experienced veterans of business combat. They're not stupid—far from it. Perhaps it's the statistical cognoscenti who "just don't get it."

By our behavior we're telling those wizards that monthly financials are steering the car by watching the center line in the road in the rear-view mirror; using absorption job cost accounting to establish prices is foolishness. Since the mid '80s, we've known that small changes in input can cause big variances in output. Yet the accountants and printing software firms still insist on predictive management models that ignore that truth. But not Sigoloff, Buck, Palmisano and printers.