But at least you know that alternatives do exist: equipment capacity, manpower, and inventory can be traded off against each other and then balanced against delivery time. Because each alternative costs money, your task is to find the most cost-effective way to deploy your resources—the key to optimizing all types of productive work. Bear in mind that in this and in other such situations there is a right answer, the one that can give you the best delivery time and product quality at the lowest possible cost. To find that right answer, you must develop a clear understanding of the trade-offs
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