Later that same day, Hollen temporarily left the office to inspect a delayed wagon delivery from one of the charcoal suppliers.

Which honestly gave Ernest exactly what he wanted.

Silence.

And access to the records.

The office became much quieter without the forge owner around.

Downstairs, the distant sounds of hammering still echoed faintly upward through the wooden floorboards.

CLANG.

CLANG.

CLANG.

But compared to being physically inside the workshop itself, this place remained infinitely calmer.

Ernest sat alone at the desk while surrounded by ledgers, merchant requests, inventory records, and payment parchments.

Honestly, now that he officially worked upstairs, he could finally start understanding the actual financial side of the forge.

And that mattered.

Because operational efficiency meant nothing if he did not understand cash flow.

Slowly, Ernest pulled several ledgers closer before opening them one by one.

The accounting system here barely qualified as accounting.

Actually, it looked more like scattered financial memories written onto paper.

Some entries recorded payments properly.

Others only wrote vague descriptions like:

"Paid coal supplier."

No exact totals.

No categorized expenses.

No running balances.

No profit tracking.

No monthly summaries.

From a modern accounting perspective, this forge was financially blind.

Ernest grabbed a blank parchment afterward before dipping the feather pen into ink.

Then slowly, he began writing categories.

Income.

Expenses.

Materials.

Labor.

Transport.

Merchant payments.

Even the simple act of separating money flowing in and out already made things clearer.

Because right now, Hollen’s forge treated all coin movement like water dumped into one giant bucket.

No structure.

No tracking.

No visibility.

Ernest quietly muttered while writing.

"If you don’t know where money goes, you don’t know where problems are."

Back on Earth, businesses constantly tracked cash flow because revenue alone meant nothing.

A company could earn massive amounts of money and still collapse if expenses spiraled uncontrollably.

Ernest remembered a university professor once explaining it simply.

"Revenue is vanity. Profit is sanity."

That line stuck with him even now.

Slowly, Ernest began reviewing the forge’s income records.

Merchant Calder.

Tool orders.

Horseshoes.

Nails.

Farming equipment.

Weapon repairs.

Actually, the forge earned surprisingly decent money.

Much more than Ernest initially expected.

One large merchant contract alone could bring tens of thousands of riels.

And yet despite that?

The forge constantly struggled operationally.

Meaning expenses and inefficiencies were eating profits heavily somewhere.

Then Ernest started reviewing outgoing payments.

Coal purchases.

Iron shipments.

Charcoal deliveries.

Labor wages.

Transport costs.

Immediately, patterns started forming inside his head.

Actually, one problem became obvious almost instantly.

No forecasting.

The forge purchased materials reactively instead of predictively.

For example, coal supplies sometimes ran low unexpectedly, forcing emergency purchases at higher prices from nearby suppliers.

Which honestly resembled modern factories panic-buying materials because of poor inventory planning.

Then another issue appeared.

Duplicate purchases.

Actually, several coal deliveries happened unusually close together despite inventory records suggesting enough stock already existed.

Meaning either:

One.

Inventory counts were inaccurate.

Or two.

Materials were disappearing. It could mean something like a possible theft or waste or both.

Ernest continued reviewing the ledgers one by one while the morning sunlight slowly shifted across the office floor.

The deeper he went through the records, the more problems he found.

Some merchant payments were delayed simply because invoices got misplaced beneath unrelated parchments.

One page recorded a coal delivery worth twelve thousand riels, but the following week another emergency coal purchase happened despite inventory supposedly still being sufficient.

That alone told him something important.

Nobody upstairs truly knew how much stock remained inside the forge at any given time.

Everything relied too heavily on estimates and memory.

And memory failed constantly.

Ernest grabbed another blank parchment before writing a title at the top.

Material Flow Tracking.

Then beneath it, he drew arrows.

Coal storage → Furnace use → Remaining stock.

Iron shipment → Workshop use → Finished products.

Simple.

Very simple.

But powerful.

Because once materials started being tracked from entry to usage, losses became visible.

Without visibility, waste quietly consumed profits in the background.

Then Ernest noticed another issue.

Worker specialization.

Or rather... lack of it.

The forge assigned tasks based on whoever happened to be nearby instead of organized workflow scheduling.

One worker might spend half the morning forging nails, then suddenly switch to hauling coal because someone shouted for help.

Another might stop sharpening tools midway to assist furnace operations.

From a management perspective, it was chaos.

Flexible labor sounded useful at first.

But too much switching reduced efficiency badly.

Workers lost rhythm.

Tasks slowed down.

Mistakes increased.

It was like trying to cook soup while constantly being forced to leave the kitchen every few minutes.

Eventually everything became slower.

Ernest quickly wrote another note.

Standardized task assignments.

Then another.

Dedicated workflow stations.

If workers remained assigned to consistent roles, production speed would stabilize.

More stable production meant more predictable output.

And predictable output meant better delivery scheduling.

This was basic operations management.

Yet in this world, these ideas barely existed.

The forge still functioned mostly through brute effort.

Another thing bothered Ernest too.

There were no production targets.

Workers simply labored until Hollen decided enough products had been made.

No quotas.

No measurable goals.

No output benchmarks.

That made performance evaluation nearly impossible.

If one furnace team produced forty horseshoes daily while another only produced twenty-five, nobody would even notice.

The forge lacked data.

And without data, improvement became guesswork.

Ernest dipped the pen back into ink before drafting another system.

Daily Production Record.

Worker Team — Product Type — Quantity Produced — Materials Used.

Simple tables again.

Back on Earth, factories tracked thousands of variables using computers and software.

Meanwhile here, even basic handwritten tracking would already revolutionize operations.

Then suddenly, Ernest heard footsteps approaching outside the office.

Hollen.

The forge owner stepped inside carrying several rolled parchments under one arm.

"You’re still working?" he asked while raising a brow slightly.

Ernest nodded.

"I’m reviewing the forge finances."

That immediately caught Hollen’s attention.

"...Finances?"

The owner walked closer toward the desk afterward before looking down at the parchments Ernest organized.

Tables.

Categories.

Expense summaries.

Material tracking concepts.

Hollen frowned slightly.

"What’s all this?"

Ernest pointed toward one ledger.

"Your forge leaks money because decisions are reactive instead of planned."

The owner narrowed his eyes.

"Explain."

Ernest grabbed the coal delivery records first.

"You buy materials only after shortages happen."

Then he pointed toward another page.

"That forces emergency purchases."

Then another.

"Emergency purchases cost more."

Hollen slowly blinked once.

Then twice.

"...By the gods."

The owner quickly grabbed the records himself afterward.

And after comparing the numbers for several moments, his face slowly tightened.

"He overcharged me..."

"Because he knew you were desperate," Ernest explained calmly.

That was another universal business principle.

Suppliers gained leverage when buyers lacked preparation.

The same thing happened in modern economies constantly.

Poor inventory planning created vulnerability.

Hollen slowly lowered the ledger afterward before staring at Ernest strangely again.

"You figured all this out in one morning?"

Ernest shrugged lightly.

"I just followed the numbers."