As we closed out 2013, I am frankly in awe of the NAFTA Accounts Receivable (AR) results — December had the best ever past due performance. We had significant improvement over 2012 – not an easy task!

More humble still , however,is  how these results were achieved. As I know blood, sweat, and even some tears were involved, I am convinced that our values of Trust, Passion to Win, Freedom to Act, and For One Another played a critical role in delivering such previously unheard performance. And this during a year with no lack of issues that continuously threatened brining the cash in the door.

Since the Accounts Receivable function has been reporting to me in the last 12 months, I have seen incredible collaboration between the AR teams, the Automotive Business Units with whom we partner, Key Account Management/Sales, IT, and all of the other functional areas.  This is one of the reasons that Eunice Chun, our AR Manager and representing the whole NAFTA AR team, received an Automotive Gold Award for involvement of  the global team to improve working capital in 3 years.  The pull together to solve complex problems and drive issues to closure has been truly inspiring.  To observe the move of Continental Values from being a nice concept to actually being practiced enthusiastically across the organization  has been especially gratifying.  There has clearly been much more “lending a hand” as opposed to ”pointing a finger”!

Without so many  employees across Continental really living these values, I don’t see how we could have ever achieved this. Many thanks to all those involved in delivering these results, and also in creating the environment in which we work even better!

Let’s keep moving forward in 2014 with more continuous improvement & collaboration!