Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen we'll now be conducting the question-and-answer session. (Operator instructions). Our first question is coming from Mark Parr, of Keybanc Capital. Please state your question.
Mark Parr - Keybanc Capital Markets
Hey, thanks a lot. Hey good morning everybody.
Mark Comerford
Good morning Mark.
Marcel Martin
Good morning.
Mark Parr - Keybanc Capital Markets
Hay, one thing, just for clarification, Marcel. When you talked about your inventory reduction plans for '09, were you talking about pounds or dollars? I thought you said pounds.
Marcel Martin
I was talking about dollars.
Mark Parr - Keybanc Capital Markets
Okay.
Marcel Martin
When I... I may have misspoken. When I was talking about... I mentioned that we've looked to reduce our inventories over the balance of the year between $50 to $75 million.
Mark Parr - Keybanc Capital Markets
Okay. Alright. Any, Mark, you talked about the improvements in the manufacturing process allowing you to move material through the backlog more quickly. Could you talk about what we might be able to expect or what we ought to be looking for as far as say weeks of sales in the backlog, say looking at fiscal '08 versus fiscal '09 versus fiscal 2010 in terms of what you would anticipate the weeks of fails in the backlog to represent?
Mark Comerford
Yeah, it's kind of tough one Mark. When I think about backlog and I think of essential lead times, queue time plus the actual manufacturing context times, if you go back a year or so, and just quoting somewhere around the order of 22-26 weeks and then the reliability also comes into play as well. How reliable are you to that metric, of hitting that 22 or 26 weeks?
What we've seen in the past x number of months, a lot of the investments that we've made in the equipments, the furnaces and things like that that you know about as well as some help we've been getting in some of the techniques that we're doing for measurements out in the plants. And frankly, also through the effort of the people in the plants, has one cut lead times now? So, we are not quoting on the area of some of the more common alloys that go through the plants, or somewhere around 12 weeks, occasionally less depending on the product form, as well as some of the more complex alloys, we're in the area of 16 weeks. So when I sit back and sort of look at targets for working capital, and inventory and process in the plants, I immediately just start subtracting weaker metal that I see going through the plants.
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