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	690000	760000	840000
Cost of Goods Sold	483000	532000	588000
Gross Profit	207000	228000	252000
Net Income	-13800	60800	67200

Balance Sheet (all numbers in thousands)

	2018	2017	2016
Net Receivables	1449000	2006400	2010960
Inventory	414000	418000	478800
Total Assets	3450000	4180000	4788000
Accounts Payable	621000	961400	948024
Total Liabilities	3105000	3845600	4309200

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 or decrease

ITR will (Click to select) increase or decrease

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