These actions have improved financial results by increasing customer satisfaction, and thereby sale, and by cutting costs. One source of cost reduction is through efficiency improvements. Nichols has 22 production lines that mix 1,692 different raw materials into more than 600 different products. Thus, setup time involved in changing from one product to another is important. In the pas, production employee did not know how well their group was performing. Now, the staring and posing of such information has spurred employees to find innovative ways to improve. One result: changeover time has been reduced by 50%. The improved morale has also cut absenteeism by more than half, from 4.5%to2.1%. this has resulted in lees overtime and the ability to increase production without having to hire additional workers.