A common theme among non financial people is just what terrible decisions financial people make. I'm operating guy, but with finance background and education so I've a boot in both camps and imo its an unwarranted prejudice I recall a biz school case where you had to build an inventory model for a seasonal business, the result was a P&L that was extensive and accounted for inventory including capital cost. Next lecture you came in with your model built, the prof started giving you monthly sales figures and you saw how your P&L performed based on what model said to do with inventory. The model was tested as the year unfolded with varying monthly sales. The best bottom line would win, and the learning exercise of course was understanding why . We built models that thought of everything, but the bottom line was, contribution from a sale was so much greater than the cost of inventory that the winning model was build inventory at the max rate non stop for Jan 1 on.
The point being, a good business/finance person makes decisions that should positively affect the bottom taking into account all considerations and aspects of the business, including the cost of capital and what the customer wants and that is what the education emphasizes, not just remove inventory or increase turns no matter what.
I regularly build to inventory, low margin stuff like roll off containers. Sure I've added to the capital cost, but I've also not squandered those hours of labour when I haven't a paying job for a someone to work on.