In some ways, the company had reached the point of diminishing returns in managing to the financial numbers. It was found that sometimes toward the end of a quarter, if inventories looked too high on the balance sheet, produc- tion would be stopped. Occasionally, customer production lines had been shut down because of lack of material from this vendor. So far, the client had been protected by its products having been designed into the customers' products; but, this close relationship and dependency was now in some cases hurting the customer rather than serving him Over time, the customers could change that if the situation didn't improve. There was a need to back away from ex- treme financial management and to make some internal investment in pro- cesses, systems and people, and start to put customer service back into bal ance in the supply chain equation