ABSTRACT
The goal of every company is to make money. More specifically, the objective is to earn a high return on assets. Manufacturing companies do this by transforming resources, such as equipment, people, money, facilities and materials into outputs of finished products which they sell profitably. These resources are configured or trained to perform certain processes to transform material inputs into finished products, which can be characterized as either for consumer, industrial or professional markets. The products are then sold into these different markets and into different areas of the world, either domestic or international.
