For Coats, the cash to cash cycle time was 156 days, implying cash would need to be held up for more than ve months during the conversion process.2 As a result, cash ow management was crucial to Coats\" business success and even survival. As retailers demanded that inventory be restocked more quickly, apparel manufacturers were forced to reduce their production lead times. As the upstream supplier to these apparel manufacturers, Coats in turn was expected by its customers to meet a minimal or almost instant order fulllment time. Within the sewing thread industry, in order to offer excellent service and turnaround times, building inventory was standard practice. The difculty in this make-to-stock environment was accurately predicting the demand for individual stock-keeping units (SKUs). If the thread manufacturers held too much inventory, cash was adversely affected. However, if the thread manufacturers held too little inventory, service levels were reduced, which was detrimental in such a highly competitive industry. One of Coats' key strengths was the nancial investment that they had made in both IT and production machinery, which signicantly helped to reduce manufacturing lead times. In devising their operations strategy, Coats needed to balance their customer expectations in relation to response times and custom solutions against the increased complexity that came from offering and producing an immense range of thread products. Ultimately, the operations team also had to be responsible for maximizing or at least maintaining cash flow within the business, as mandated by the Board of Directors. Jamie wondered whether there was indeed a business or operations policy framework that would allow him to prioritize these tradeoffs