Acme Industrials, Inc. is a conglomerate with interests in mining, heavy equipment and construction. Excerpted portions of three years of its financial statements are below.

Income Statement (all numbers in thousands)

	2018	2017	2016
Total Revenue	640000	860000	820000
Cost of Goods Sold	448000	602000	574000
Gross Profit	192000	258000	246000
Net Income	-25600	34400	32800

Balance Sheet (all numbers in thousands)

	2018	2017	2016
Net Receivables	1344000	2270400	1963080
Inventory	384000	473000	467400
Total Assets	3200000	4730000	4674000
Accounts Payable	576000	1087900	925452
Total Liabilities	2880000	4351600	4206600

a. Use the information in the table above to compute supply chain metrics for Acme's most recent two years.

Notes:

1. Computing "average" values requires two time periods of data, the beginning of a period, and the end of a period. Annual reports provide the end-of-year number for that year. To get the beginning-of-year data, use the prior year's end-of-year number.
2. Round ROA to 3 decimals. Round ITR to 2 decimals.
3. Enter all responses in decimal format, i.e., enter -0.12 or 0.12.

Metric	2018	2017
Return on assets (ROA)
Inventory turnover ratio (ITR)

b. What direction should each metric move, from 2017 to 2018, to indicate improvement in supply chain ROI?

ROA will (Click to select) increase decrease

ITR will (Click to select) increase decrease

c. Overall, Acme's metrics (have or have not) improved from 2017 to 2018.

-have

-have not