The most important machine.

In any profit or non-profit business--pulp, paper, pencils, or pastries--the most important machine is always the same. It is simply the invoice printer. It seems trivially obvious when you think about it, but many employees and managers do not understand this basic fact.

Why is the invoice printer the most important machine? Because it is the only reason that everything else in the business exists. A legitimately prepared invoice is the only legal way other than donations that any business can consistently raise money that does not require repayment to banks or does not represent equity.

Your firm may have a great mission statement that alludes to making the best products, providing the best services, and so forth. In reality, those ideals are simply the means used by your firm to produce invoices. Some person or group of people once originated the enterprise for which you work. They formed it either to make money or to represent a cause. In both cases, an obvious link existed between invoicing and the sustainable existence of the enterprise.

When one realizes that the existence of all enterprises revolves around the printing of invoices, a sobering awakening materializes. A link to invoicing must exist between all expenditures whether they are for capital assets or human efforts. In other words, how do you contribute to invoicing at the enterprise where you work? What is the link between you and the invoice printer?

Some people accepted this idea long ago. For others, it may be a startlingly new concept. When your company hired you, the theoretical idea was that you would create more invoicing in the long term than you cost. Although this is a starkly simple concept, many people miss it.

This discussion has one caveat because it does not mention how to make invoicing happen. I have completely avoided the subject of margins or such matters on purpose. Efficiency of invoicing is a purely individual company matter. In the United States and some other counties, this can quickly lead to the dreaded anti-trust issues if discussed in a collaborative manner.

If you have been reading my material for a while, you know that I often like to compare our manufacturing conditions to those we find in everyday retail experiences. In the United States, two glaring examples make the point of this article. I often visit our local "big box" home improvement store. I gather the items I need and then become frustrated because only one or two checkout aisles are open. I find this amazing. In the end, this facility exists only to make its cash registers ring. In contrast, our local Target store always has many checkout aisles open. When a cashier has no customers in their queue, they step to the incoming portion of their area and herd customers to their ready cash register. Target understands the concept.

If the ideas here have left you pondering how you contribute to invoicing where you work, I have an even more sobering exercise for you. See if you can determine to bow many decimal points you must extend the earnings per share of your enterprise to detect your individual contribution!

About the author: James R. Thompson is Chairman and CEO of Talo Analytic International, Inc., an Atlanta-based consulting company. He is also a member of the TAPPI Editorial Board. Contact him at: [e-mail]