It's very important. This situation that the tool shops are currently in has been years in the making. The PPAP type of parts approval system has been in place for several years. But to pin 100% payment on it...it has come to the point, with the big three coming back to the suppliers, wanting give-backs and cost-cutting, and not just with the mould shops but also the tier ones, where you've carved a lot of the profit out of the system.
Combine that with a very punitive type of payment system. A tier one, for example, could run parts off an interim A type of tool, provide those parts that were saleable or approved to go on a car, and still get paid in 30 days for the parts they supply, yet the tool is technically not approved for payment so they don't have to pay for the tool.
Tool shops, by definition, are export-driven companies, but in order to maintain their competitive edge.... There are intensive payments and intensive costs of new machinery. For a five-year-old machine, whether you use it 500 hours a year or 5,000 hours a year, the technology is five years old and has to be replaced.
Companies will come in. If you want to get into the big three you will be surveyed as to your competence levels and what type of machinery you have. This is all part and parcel of being approved to work for them, yet they're not going to pay you to buy that technology that's necessary for you to be approved as a supplier.
The end result is that it will create a cost disadvantage. No matter what you do, if you're not going to get paid for two years, you're going to have to somehow put your bank's interest on the price of that tool. If you want to compete against a Chinese tool shop, for example, if they're getting paid in progress payments, that alone would cause a cost advantage for them because they're not carrying the money. In some cases, we have been carrying money in this type of payment system from 1995. You heard the president of Ford of Canada in here earlier today saying that it's been tough since October to carry the paper, to carry the money. We've been carrying it since the nineties.