"This is really bad," he said. "Someone should be in China driving this." “这太糟糕了。”他说，“应该有人马上去中国处理这件事。”

　　Thirty minutes later he looked at an operations executive sitting at the table and unemotionally asked, "Why are you still here?" 30分钟后，他看着还在桌前坐着的一位运营主管，面无表情地说：“你怎么还没走？”

　　The executive stood up, drove directly to the San Francisco airport, and bought a ticket to China. 那位主管站起来，没带任何行李，直接开车去了旧金山机场，买了机票飞往中国。

　　He became one of Cook's top deputies. 他后来成了库克的第一副手。

　　Cook reduced the number of Apple's key suppliers from a hundred to twenty-four, 库克把苹果的主要供应商从100家减少到24家，

　　forced them to cut better deals to keep the business, 并要求他们减少其他公司的订单，

　　convinced many to locate next to Apple's plants, and closed ten of the company's nineteen warehouses. 还说服许多家供应商迁到苹果工厂旁边，此外，他还把公司的19个库房关闭了10个。

　　By reducing the places where inventory could pile up, he reduced inventory. 库房减少了，存货就无处堆放，于是他又减少了库存。

　　Jobs had cut inventory from two months' worth of product down to one by early 1998. 到1998年初，乔布斯把两个月的库存期缩短到一个月。

　　By September of that year, Cook had gotten it down to six days. 然而到同年9月底，库克已经把库存期缩短到6天。

　　By the following September, it was down to an amazing two days' worth. 下一年的9月，这个数字已经达到惊人的两天。

　　In addition, he cut the production process for making an Apple computer from four months to two. 另外，库克还把制造苹果计算机的生产周期从4个月压缩到两个月。

　　All of this not only saved money, it also allowed each new computer to have the very latest components available. 所有这些改革不仅降低了成本，而且也保证了每一台新计算机都安装了最新的组件。