Diebold 2006 Annual Report
[The Path Forward][CEO's Letter][Financials][Index]

In a global company like ours, we need to have guiding principles that help all of us make decisions every day. These five priorities have done that for us. They were distributed in local languages and posted in our offices, warehouses and manufacturing plants around the world. These posters are even hanging outside Tom Swidarski's office.

I think we're making progress on each priority. We're a stronger company than we were a year ago. Yes, we have a lot of work left to do. There's still a lot of opportunity to improve how we do business.

My focus is on leading our global procurement initiatives and improving direct material purchases. Materials are a large component of our overall cost structure, and we expect $25 million of the $100 million planned in cost reductions to come from direct material purchases. So we're closely aligning our supply chain network with our global manufacturing footprint, and we're creating a better supplier management system. As an example, we implemented a vendor-managed inventory system that has allowed us to reduce the lead times from our suppliers on needed components. Looking at circuit cards alone, we were able to cut lead times in half.

I'm proud of the progress we've made so far and think the best is yet to come. There's a lot of enthusiasm and a lot more openness in working with others across the company - we know we're all driving to achieve the same goals.