Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions). Our first question comes from Ed Aaron, RBC Capital Markets. Your line is open.
Ed Aaron - RBC Capital Markets
Dusty this is I guess kind of a broad question and maybe not one with very clear answers. But I think, we're all kind of scratching our heads about what this industry is going look like in two or three years from now. And to your earlier point the credit environment is certainly changing the way that the industry manages around inventory.
Just curious to get a little more insight into what assumptions you are making about, what is ultimately going to be considered the quote-unquote right amount of inventory, to have out their? And then also, how do you expect to manage around the production just from a seasonal standpoint, longer term considering the higher cost of providing floor-plan financing?
Dusty McCoy
First, we're starting with two fundamental assumptions. We are not planning for the markets to come back to 2005 levels, likely within my working carrier, and I hope that's a fairly long carrier. Secondly, we've begun to plan on a dealer-by-dealer basis, what we think the minimum levels of inventory we ought to be carrying in the fields. And they are going to be a fair bit lower at than anything we've had out there.
So, outstanding's for dealer's are going to have to go down or going to have to stay down. What that then is going to do is require us rather than level loading. We are going to have to think our production. We [want] to be thinking very hard about how we have much more flexible production and that has been at the core, and Ed, of our beginning to change the manufacturing footprint.
And the way I described in the past we've gone from brand based manufacturing with multiple models to model base manufacturing with multiple brands. And that will permit us then to be much more flexible and to be more responsive to dealers so that we can respond on and make the order basis much better than we've done in the past. Rather than just level loading and push it out all through the four quarters, and then ask the dealers to carry inventory for a long time.
So, we are focused on the industry being smaller, therefore we are positioning our cost so that we can have great margins in the smaller industry. We are planning for our dealers to carry a fair bit less inventory, I would even say significantly less inventory. And we've begun to think now hard for two years about what our manufacturing footprint needs to look like to permit us to be more responsive to nice order dealer network. Is that helpful at all?
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