Questionnaires were mailed to a universe of 4,000 PRODUCTS FINISHING plants with manufacturing SICs.

We mailed the surveys to upper echelon readers—presidents; executive vice presidents; general managers; vice presidents of manufacturing and/or operations; plant, works or factory managers and superintendents; directors of production engineering; and managers of manufacturing—people with lateral interests and access to the budgetary information and plans needed to complete our questionnaire. We mailed one questionnaire per plant using a computer program to select the highest title reached from a alphabetical search of each plan galley.

We conducted the survey from September 14, 2007 to October 15, 2007. As of the closing date, 497 surveys were returned for a 12.4% response rate. A total of 474 surveys were determined usable. Unless otherwise indicated, all figures are percentages.