[AlDante2]

The strategy you outline is classic BATNA. Your BATNA is your best alternative to negotiated agreement - your walk-away position. The stronger that is, the more leverage you have in negotiating. By improving lead times, your friend improved his BATNA, as you say, so much that he no longer needed the negotiation.

[barfbagginus]

Yes exactly that! When he came to me with a string of dubious offers, we discussed the idea of strengthening the batna instead of panicking and taking on investor risk. What pain points do we need to tackle first if investment is simply not an option? This got us excited about really digging in to the production process, where we found a bunch of low hanging fruit to improve!