Every boardroom I have sat in over the last three decades opens with the same slide — revenue. The line curves upward, everyone nods, and the meeting moves on. The problem is that the revenue slide almost never survives contact with the treasurer.
In industrial manufacturing, revenue is a lagging indicator. What actually pays salaries, raw material bills, and shareholders is cash — specifically, the cash that has completed the round-trip from raw material to delivered invoice to bank account. That round-trip is the Cash Conversion Cycle (CCC), and it is the single most under-loved metric in industrial P&Ls.
When we look at manufacturers with strong revenue but weak CCC, four patterns show up: bloated raw stock (usually justified as 'supply chain resilience'), inventory hiding as WIP on the floor, DSO stretched by top customers who dictate terms, and DPO shorter than industry median because finance is nervous about supplier relationships.
The fix is rarely dramatic. It is a disciplined, week-by-week programme: tiered credit policy for A/B/C customers, buffer sizing at the constraint only (not everywhere), and a serious renegotiation of DPO in exchange for volume commitments. Done properly, this releases 15 to 25 percent of working capital in 90 days — cash you already earned, sitting in the wrong pocket.