Seat-of-the-Pants Management Alternative --Dickeson

It's innovation, not of a process step or procedure, but of a mind-set. You're so accustomed to looking at, and thinking about, plant labor hours that you can't imagine another way of thinking about the printing business. Look again at the table. The least category of the time cash was constrained was in plant labor hours—work-in-process. Is that where you want to focus your efforts? There you may need some physical process innovation. . . which you can't afford because your free cash is tied up in inventories, getting invoices out and collecting accounts receivable!