Question-and-Answer Session
[Operator Instructions] Our first question is coming from Mike Judd with Greenwich Consultants. Please go ahead.
Michael Judd - Greenwich Consultants
Good morning.
Craig A. Rogerson - President and Chief Executive Officer
Good morning, Mike.
Allen A. Spizzo - Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Hi, Mike.
Michael Judd - Greenwich Consultants
I promise you this is not going to be on Six Sigma, okay.
Craig A. Rogerson - President and Chief Executive Officer
Yes.
Michael Judd - Greenwich Consultants
You guys have really done an excellent job there and so congratulations first of all. And then just sort of moving forward, as you think about your forecast for 2008, where do you think the greatest opportunities are for management to make a difference in terms of strategic actions?
Craig A. Rogerson - President and Chief Executive Officer
Well I think, this is Craig, Mike. Certainly in 2008 the efficient and effective operations of the expanded China capability that we have is unicritical. That's going to be a strong seed for our growth, especially in China and the rest of Asia Pacific. So that's going to be critical. I think the other piece is, I spoke to the fact that we're going to? we expect and Allen spoke to it, to see some raw material headwinds, raw material cost headwinds, there will be some utility and freight headwinds as well in 2008. We put in price increases to reflect those and to recover the majority of that, and [inaudible] looks like they're sticking. If we do get some kind of improvement in raw material costs in the year, there is some upside there. I think we also need it from an overall quarter perspective to be able to drive these major projects that we have in the company effectively. So we got to do a better job in making sure they are not distressed. Those are things like the outsourcing and offshoring program that we talked about and the SAP technical upgrade. Those are foundations? platform or foundation type programs that will put us in a very strong position to be able to quickly implement some of these bolt-ons or maybe begin little bit bigger well done acquisitions and bring the improvements that we see, by the way we operate the bottom line quicker. So I think those are the major things that we need to do. The businesses need to be able to just operate, block and tackle as they did in 2007 and again in 2008.
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