Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions). We will take our first question from [Steven Nisan with Mindflow Capital Investments].
Steven Nisan - Mindflow Capital Investment
Hi, thank you very much, Peter first of all good job, thanks for always being so often with our shareholders on the call.
Peter Soderberg
Thank you, Steven.
Steven Nisan - Mindflow Capital Investment
Couple of things, regarding operational improved initiatives: what are you going to be doing this year? And: what have you been doing so far revolving around lean manufacturing, TQM, Six Sigma to improve throughput in your plant? And: what benefits do you guys expect to see?
Peter Soderberg
Let's break this down by the two operating companies, and I'll comment on Hill-Rom and I'll let Ken comment on Batesville.
Steven Nisan - Mindflow Capital Investment
Okay.
Peter Soderberg
And I will expand your question really to include all of the operations surrounding our, kind of, order to cash as well. In fact maybe I'll start there. If you look at the improvement in our rental business, the improvement in days of sales outstanding, that is a no small part due to both systems improvement and process improvements. We’ve had multiple an extensive lean initiatives in our very extensive order processing and cash collections operations that have yielded, frankly, very surprising and delighting benefits.
On the supply chain side, we have as we mentioned in the call done a leaning exercise in the big Hill-Rom plant here in Batesville and I'm pleased to say we haven't missed a beat. That team has done a great job. If I look globally, we are getting more than inflation out of our cost and we continue to accelerate that mandate. Customers are giving us price unfortunately, so we have to take it out of cost really rapidly. And so I would say that lean has taken flower and has even more room to grow and prosper. Ken.
Ken Camp
Well BCC has been students and practitioners in increasing degrees of the Toyota Production System, Kaiser has had done continuous improvement since the mid 90s and as characterized by a lot of our people having training in Japan including more than half the senior officer teams. So we consider a way a life, we also consider a journey, and while we are pleased with our abilities there and we occasionally think we've done it all, every year we find ways to eliminate more opportunity.
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