The Well-Timed Strategy: Managing the Business Cycle for Competitive Advantage

Chapter 5. “Macromanaging” Your Production, Inventory, and Supply Chain

“This year is shaping up to have the roughest truck-market conditions in at least seven years, and perhaps since the inflation of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Through it all, Paccar is expected to remain in the black. Every year since 1939, it has trudged through war, inflation, high interest rates and oil crises to churn out profit…”

—Luke Timmerman, Seattle Times

Companies that continue to increase their production and build up inventories as a recession approaches inevitably suffer in myriad ways. Most obviously, bloated inventories increase holding costs, leave a company ...