retrofitting. In geographic regions where we are positioned to provide quick response, we believe customers have traditionally relied on us, rather than our competitors, for aftermarket products due to our highly engineered and customized products. However, the aftermarket for standard products is competitive, as the existence of common standards allows for easier replacement of the installed products. As proximity of service centers, timeliness of delivery and quality are important considerations for all aftermarket products and services, we continue to selectively expand our global QRC capabilities to improve our ability to capture this important aftermarket business. We have pursued a strategy of industry diversity and geographic breadth to mitigate the impact on our business of normal economic downturns in any one of the industries or in any particular part of the world we serve. For events that may occur and adversely impact our business, financial condition, results of operations and cash flows, refer to "Item 1A. Risk Factors" of this Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2020 ("Annual Report"). For information on our sales and long-lived assets by geographic areas, see Note 20 to our consolidated financial statements included in "Item 8. Financial Statements and Supplementary Data" ("Item 8") of this Annual Report. Our segments share a focus on industrial flow control technology and benefit from our global footprint and our economies of scale in reducing administrative and overhead costs to serve customers more cost effectively. All segments share certain resources and functions, including elements of research and development ("R&D"), supply chain, safety, quality assurance and administrative functions that provide efficiencies and an overall lower cost structure. Our operations leadership reports to our Chief Executive Officer and the segments share leadership for operational support functions such as R&D, marketing and supply chain. We believe this leadership structure positions the Company to leverage operational excellence, cost reduction initiatives and internal synergies across our entire operating platform to drive further growth and increase in shareholder value. Our overarching objectives are to be a leader in each of the market segments we serve and become the employer of choice in the flow control industry. Additionally, we seek to be recognized by our customers as the most trusted brand of flow control technology in terms of reliability and quality, which we believe will help maximize shareholder value. In pursuit of these objectives, we maintain a rolling, five-year strategic plan that takes a balanced approach to integrating both short-term and long-term initiatives in four key areas: People, Process & Technology, Customer and Finance. With the goal of developing and maintaining a people-first culture, we focus on several elements in our strategic efforts to continuously enhance our organizational capability, including: (i) fully committing to providing a safe work environment for our associates, worldwide, (ii) upholding a high- performance workforce, that is empowered, accountable and flexible, (iii) becoming an employer of choice by fostering a people-first culture and (iv) recruiting, developing and retaining a global and diverse workforce. With the goal of improving our productivity and delivering a continuous stream of innovative solutions to our customers, we focus on select strategies relating to: (i) developing and maintaining an enterprise-first business approach across all operating units and functional organizations, (ii) simplifying our business processes and optimizing corporate structural costs, (iii) significantly reducing our product cost and rationalizing our product portfolio and (iv) becoming the technical leader in the flow control industry. With the goal of achieving the highest level of customer satisfaction amongst our peers, we focus on select strategies related to rigorous and disciplined selection of target markets and customers, while maintaining competitive lead times and emphasizing the highest levels of on-time delivery and quality. We seek to provide an outstanding experience for our customers over the entire product lifecycle by providing unique, integrated flow-control solutions that solve real-world application problems in our customers’ facilities. 2 Finance Customer Process and Technology People Strategies