I think the reason I know the program's working is because of a couple of things. One, I'm seeing the processes get improved, and I'm seeing the people be able to solve problems that they weren't able to solve before. And then when I look at, you know, our metrics, which through very metric-driven organization and, you know, it fits with our Carlisle operating system, on-time delivery in the last three years has gone from about a 7% average to 99%, working capital increased by 33% in the last two years, the cash conversion cycle has been reduced by 45% within the last three years.

From a high level, you look at those metrics and say is it a success? Probably for the lower level is seeing that light go on in a supply chain associate size when they finally figured it out, and it's because they walked right out of an APICS course and they came up to me and said I got it I figured it out.

Ingersoll Rand became involved with APICS many years ago. We had employees that were engaged in student chapters as well as local chapters. We became much more involved with APICS about three and a half years ago where we teamed up with APICS to help develop and deploy standard work across our company.

We've seen a huge difference in those folks that have gone through the APICS certification process versus those that have not. The body of knowledge that we get from APICS helps deliver great business results. Let me give you an example, "Inventory Turns" is a very important metric for us and we have data that shows that those individuals who have gone through the CPIM certification process and have passed it, deliver three times the improvement results versus those have not gone through that same education certification process.

Inventory management is very important to our company. We feel so strongly that the certification helps deliver great results for the company. We pay for that certification for all of our employees that go through these classes we pay for everything from travel to the classes; the coursework itself if you go through the online training with Fox Valley Technical College. We pay for that as well and we also pay for the certification. We feel very strongly about it not only for business results but also for the individual. We've seen great results from a company standpoint since we began this process. We had an 85% improvement in delivery results. We also maintained top-quartile performance and inventory management as well. For the individual, it's also very important because we have several examples where people got promoted and now they are leading their own factory. That helped them grow in their career.