"…It really is different from simple financial auditing. My poor, experienced subordinates spent a month and a half, and they still couldn't figure out the general situation of the Ye Workshop. It’s fine that Father asked me to take over financial management, but this job is a bit too difficult." Ye Tao rarely saw Tan Weixin looking so worried, but she was now.

"What's wrong?" Ye Tao sat next to Tan Weixin, gently holding her, and asked.

"The core of the Ye Workshop, with absolutely no involvement from other parties, is probably only the Yicheng headquarters, a part of the Danyang branch, and a small part of the Yunzhou branch. The rest, more or less, involve joint ventures, partnerships, project collaborations, and even some projects that seem to be funded by you, very similar to venture capital, but limited to the technological field. There are also numerous cooperative projects with the Ministry of War, the Forbidden Army, the Blood Kirin Army, and the several elite legions currently being formed… these accounts were never seen when Deloitte was doing the audit and consulting. The funds circulating in these projects are not much, but the flow of manpower and materials used does not have clear accounting standards… The scariest thing is that the accounting standards used by the Ye Workshop and various projects and groups with varying degrees of relationship are not all the same… Shi Wei is almost driven crazy by these things. Also, there is no way to estimate the value of the various technologies mastered by the Ye Workshop. Sophie even showed me some even more frightening things… If you want me to give you a huge number to satisfy your vanity, I'm afraid I really can't satisfy you. At least not now."

"What a pity. But I myself can't figure out the total assets. No one can figure it out." Ye Tao shrugged, looking nonchalant: "The problem now is that no one can understand it, no one can manage it, so I thought of letting you take over, to figure out such a big mess. You just need to come up with a rectification plan. As for the execution, I won't make it difficult for you."

Tan Weixin sneered: "I'm really not afraid of difficult things. Isn't it just being afraid of offending people? Don't you think about who I am. Do I really need to establish my authority by taking over a business?"

Ye Tao shrugged again, he almost forgot that Tan Weixin was still a princess.

Tan Weixin buried herself in the accounts for most of the day before saying, "How about this? After all, the Ye Workshop is a technology-centered enterprise, so when rectifying it, we should also refer to technical standards. The core institutions of the Ye Workshop will remain unchanged, naturally still directly controlled by the Ye family's father and sons, brothers and apprentices, and no one else can interfere. Other projects will be divided into different levels and transformed in different ways. I think the technology of the Ye Workshop has become increasingly exaggerated in recent years. Should we sell off the rights to use some unimportant peripheral technologies and settle them as one-time gains in the projects? Although those partners may not be able to come up with that money all at once, many of them came to you for help out of friendship, but I can have Deloitte Accounting act as their guarantor, which will not increase the payment pressure on those small partners, nor will Ye Clan suffer. As for other various projects, I have a preliminary idea…"

Tan Weixin suggested dividing the many projects of the Ye Workshop that involve funds or manpower from other parties into several categories. One category is that Ye Clan must master the core technology and have sufficient control over the industry, such as the Tissot Watch Shop. Another category is that Ye Clan can continuously provide various technical support, but only maintain limited attention in other aspects, such as the Jingdezhen business that Ye Clan has never seriously considered the management of. There is also the possibility of considering the original shareholding and future procurement separately, using the shareholding only as a bond to maintain strategic cooperative relations, such as the numerous cooperations with Federal Express, such as the incredibly popular Da Lang Tao Sha (Big Waves Wash Sand), and the chain catering business that Tan Weixin completely dragged herself into, and for this type of business, the transfer of shares can be considered if conditions are right. And those various projects that constantly occur because Ye Tao also serves as a technical consultant in the Jiuzhou (Nine Provinces) Chamber of Commerce and the Qihai (Seven Seas) Chamber of Commerce, except for some that can be considered to be sold off in a one-time manner, all the rest should be assigned to a technical consulting organization called Ye Workshop Tiangong (Heavenly Craft) Firm to handle the accounts. Technical consulting and service is one expense, and the subsequent procurement from Ye Workshop is another matter. Separating the two can avoid the already emerging situation of using a not-very-necessary cooperative project to exchange for a partnership in order to get a better discount on some products produced by Ye Workshop.

If possible, it is best to merge the Dai Construction Company and the construction department within the Ye Workshop as soon as possible, since they will be one sooner or later. This can effectively integrate internal resources and form a more powerful and effective construction department, capable of solving all problems in one package, from exploration, site selection, design, construction to interior design, home furnishings, and planting of garden vegetation. And in terms of specific design, there are also enough people to divide into teams for different directions such as civil buildings and gardens, military fortresses, urban planning and municipal engineering.

The core of the Ye Workshop is still production and research and development. The original system of the Ye Workshop combined production, research and development, and training. Although this system is not the best configuration in terms of efficiency, it allows talented people to exert their intelligence and talent at any level. Now is still the feudal era, far from the age of large factories and mass production, where efficiency is placed on the throne. This system sacrifices some efficiency, but allows technology to develop very well. Moreover, even the overall efficiency of the Ye Workshop, the assembly line and semi-assembly line operation methods that have been implemented since its inception, have made the production efficiency of the Ye Workshop far ahead of this era. In this regard, Tan Weixin's suggestion is to further optimize internally.

For example, establish a production coordination department to uniformly purchase, store, and transport various materials and tools, and to rationally allocate the workshop's production capacity and formulate reasonable production plans. Since the current communication methods cannot achieve unified management across different locations, the Ye family and several brothers and apprentices can only provide a general strategy and coordinate for the current two workshops and the future three workshops, and each of the three locations must independently set up a production coordination department.

In addition, the increasingly famous Ye Workshop training system over the years needs to be significantly reformed. Even if the Ye Workshop originally accepted paid training from outsiders, it was exactly the same as training its own apprentices and workers. In the initial stage, there were no restrictions on majors, and most of them were assigned according to which workshops needed more manpower to work. But as the technology of the Ye Workshop becomes more in-depth and specialized, according to the original standards, an apprentice needs to learn more and more content and needs more and more time to be promoted to worker and technician. In the past year, the internal training of technical personnel has not kept up with the development of the business. As for external training, although the Ye Workshop has long been powerful enough to be a big bully, and other workshops send people here, they basically wait for the Ye Workshop to say they can be sent back. Except for some short training classes run by several directors on a whim, no one dares to be picky about the time. In fact, the efficiency of training is still low. However, among the apprentices sent from other families, there are also talented ones, but in the Ye Workshop system, even in just two years, those who are really talented and have brains may already be able to come into contact with some of the Ye Workshop's secrets.

Tan Weixin felt that there was much room for improvement in this situation. It might be better to adjust so that apprentices can do odd jobs in different workshops for the first three to six months after entering the Ye Workshop, learning some basic skills. Those who cannot integrate into the environment and atmosphere of the Ye Workshop will naturally be eliminated. The remaining apprentices must choose a direction to develop in. After all, the Ye Workshop is no longer as simple as it was in the early days when it was mainly carpentry, combined with some other parts manufacturing. It is now a comprehensive entity that almost covers all the manufacturing industries of this time and space, and it is impossible for apprentices to master everything. And the external training should be specialized, and outside apprentices should no longer be treated the same as Ye's own recruits. Outside trainees are decided by the masters who sent them to what extent they should be trained, and then a basic test is conducted to determine their technical starting level. Tan Weixin even suggested classifying disciplines such as carpentry, carving, lacquer work, rough metalwork, fine metalwork, stonework, construction, dyeing, papermaking, and even project management, and formulating standards for each stage of each category's technology. Internally, different technical levels can be used to regulate salaries and personnel management, and technical level and title are also a craftsman's honor; externally, such technical levels can be used as the basis for training, not only as the basis for training requirements, but also as the basis for charging fees. During the training period of the trainees, about half of the time is used to improve various rigid technical indicators, and half of the time is to intern in the workshop. According to the current reputation and influence of the Ye Workshop, this set of technical levels is likely to become the universally accepted assessment standard and employment standard.

According to Tan Weixin's framework, the only project that may not be classified is the Baowentang Bookstore. Baowentang Bookstore is already the most technologically advanced printing institution of this era, with relatively complete etching plate making, metal movable type typesetting system, hot glue binding technology, etc. No matter what those novels said before, anyway, Ye Tao has never experienced how much money movable type printing can save. Because Baowentang Bookstore has hardly made any money except for publishing best-selling academic journals such as *Historical Research* recently, and has been living on large subsidies from the internal treasury. The technology of Baowentang Bookstore is all made with large sums of money, and it has only just reached a relatively good level, and has just begun to recover the initial costs. Even now, the biggest cost is not plate making and ink. The cost of plate making cannot be reduced, because the cost of those etched paintings cannot be reduced. And in this era, the cost of plate samples that integrate various art elements is high. But these technical costs will eventually decrease, but the cost of paper will always be a problem. Especially since Baowentang Bookstore insists on using paper produced by the Ye Workshop itself for most of its books, because it has better thickness, hardness, and flexibility to adapt to hot glue binding.

Tan Weixin's idea is that the current technical level of Baowentang Bookstore is already very good. But the real capabilities of Baowentang have not yet been used. That is no longer printing, but the ability to publicize with powerful printing as the backing. What Ye Tao did in the Yunzhou (Cloud Province) Jingluefu (Pacification Commissioner's Office) Road and Bridge Division has made the senior management of Dongping (Eastern Peace) realize the power of multi-channel publicity with the same voice and the same image, and Tan Xiaopei, Tan Weiming, Tan Weiran, and others who can access the full picture of Ye Tao's layout in the Leiyin (Thunder Sound) Demon Sect understand the power of thought and publicity even more. And this power, Tan Weixin carefully decided, must be held in her own hands. Although publicity and printing cannot be equated, it is still more reassuring to have Baowentang in her own hands.

When Tan Weixin first started talking about her ideas, Ye Tao was only listening, but when he found that Tan Weixin's plan was quite detailed and grand, he simply asked people to bring Zhao Dazhu and others to listen together. Zhao Dazhu is not good at business, but in the Ye Workshop, it is the technical personnel who have the power. Also invited were Ye Fu's accountant, Wei Zhi, the first IKEA home store manager, Jian Datong, who is still mainly responsible for the sales of civilian products, and of course, one of Ye Tao's fathers-in-law: Dai Yuege.

When everyone had finished listening to Tan Weixin's plan, except for Dai Yuege, they all looked at each other, not knowing how to react. Dai Yuege knew from the beginning that the Dai Construction Company would be merged into the Ye Workshop sooner or later. Now, obviously his daughter and Princess were getting along very well, so he didn't need to treat the construction company as a bargaining chip for his daughter, and besides, in front of Tan Weixin, who can almost be called the "God of Commerce" of this era, there is probably nothing that can be regarded as a bargaining chip. After the merger of the Ye Workshop's construction department and the Dai Construction Company, Dai Yuege is still responsible for this much stronger and more comprehensive institution.

But those rectifications in other aspects are really… so complicated that everyone can't understand them quickly. But in the final analysis, the entire rectification is to standardize and optimize internal processes, and while maintaining the Ye Workshop's technological advantages and speed of technological development, divide the internal into different professional directions, and each department will have a person in charge to coordinate. This model of assigning responsibility to people and setting up management personnel in layers is indeed much more reasonable than having everything, even slightly bigger matters, reported to several directors as it is now.