Get a 12-Step Program --Dickeson

I advocate the use of a bogey, a target, to give weekly direction. Call it my Break-Even Bogey. Change it as necessary. It's a realistic prediction of cash needs. Everybody understands the cash target and break even. It's not set in granite like a yearly budget. Simple common sense.

Then we MUST measure the "dwell" time of our inventories: raw materials, work-in-process, finished goods and accounts receivable. Cash-to-cash. Did it take 64.7 days or 22.3? We're investing cash in raw materials and, at the end of the game, we're receiving cash from receivables. Shift your concentration from expenditures for adding value to inventories to the inventories themselves. This is a radical innovation for our industry but, again, one that's consistent with simple common sense.