Like most companies, Quaker’s objective is to maximize its return on capital investments. Our capital-budgeting decision depends on many quantitative and qualitative factors including project length, involvement of existing or cutting-edge technology, and the project’s size and scope. Techniques used to evaluate the financial viability of capital projects include payback, internal rate of return (IRR), and net present value (NPV). At Quaker we prefer the NPV (discounted cash flow) methodology because this approach provides the most appropriate decision-making criteria.