Considering that the United States has been moving away from manufacturing and toward a service orientation, we are rapidly becoming predominantly time-based.
Time is bought, sold, and wasted.
Oddly, most companies do little in the way of reducing the amount of time wasted, although the latter is exceedingly costly. Not to carry the mode to extremes, that's about twenty cents a minute. There are a number of steps which can be taken, but perhaps the best is a planning process which includes writing job descriptions. A job description, well written, can reduce the number of people it takes to do a job, since responsibilities are defined in such a way that the time necessary to do the job are spelled out in detail. In smaller companies, proper staffing is critical.