Consumer products, value chain

Founded in 1987, TSMC was the semiconductor industry s first pure-piay foundry, in this roie, the company made no product of its own and focused aii of its efforts in making semiconductor chips for third-party manufacturers. Today, the company is one of the world s largest foundries serving more than 450 customers and manufacturing more than 8,800 products for a variety of applications in computer, communications, and consumer electronics value chains. 

The principal objective of technical service in the chemical industry is to provide timely and professional information and support to downstream customers regarding chemical products and thek uses. It is neither cost-effective nor necessary for a consumer of chemical products to develop a staff of speciahsts having detailed expertise in all aspects of chemical raw materials and thek uses, particularly in a time of increa singly complex and rapidly technologically driven economies. Rather, this variety of expertise is provided in the chemical marketplace by technical service professionals whose knowledge and skills are made available by chemical products suppHers. As such, successful chemical companies provide technical service as a critical element of thek offerings to the marketplace making use of this aspect of the value chain to enhance thek competitiveness. 

Porter s value chain is one basis for the development of the supply chain. The term supply chain was created by consultant Keith Oliver in 1982 according to Heckmann et al. (2003). Compared to the company-internal focus of Porter s value chain, the supply chain extends the scope towards intra-company material and information flows from raw materials to the end-consumer reflected in the definition of Christopher (1992) a supply chain is a network of organizations that are involved through upstream and downstream linkages in different processes and activities that product value in the form of products and services in the hand of the ultimate consumer . Core ideas of the supply chain concept are ... 

Enter new parts of the value chain, typically downstream elements closer to the end consumer. Downstream players often add significant value to the product just before it gets to the end consumer. If specialty chemical companies can enter these parts of the value chain by leveraging their existing business models and core capabilities, they can capture a piece of this additional value. However, this proposition may prove difficult, since the downstream markets are often very different from chemical ones. They are, for example, extremely fragmented, and they have to cope with frequently changing consumer tastes. 

To illustrate these points, let s take a closer look at a specific industry—consumer products—and the dynamics of its nnderly-ing value network. The consnmer value chain is composed of many companies. It stretches from the consumer through a network of retailers, mannfactnrers, and suppliers. Other industries—transportation, third-party logistics firms, freight forwarders, and marketing agencies—play snpporting roles. It is not linear. Instead, it is a network of hnndreds of companies. Each company within the chain operates multiple supply chains. The industry has worked hard to be collaborative however, today few interactions are truly collaborative. They lack alignment and a win-win value proposition that can sustain the test of time. 

Recent trends in social media, e-commerce shopping, and product personalization have recently shifted power from the retailer to the consumer. As the power equation changed within the value chain, competition increased and margins became tighter. To improve competitiveness, the parties shifted the burden of the costs and working capital backward in the value chain. 

In the old economic order, the focus was on the immediate customer. Today business no longer has the luxury of thinking about just the immediate customer. To find and keep customers our perspective has to be radically expanded. In a value migration world, our vision must include two, three, or even four customers along the value chain. So, for example, a component supplier must understand the economic motivations of the manufacturer who buys the components, the distributor who takes the manufacturers products to sell and the end-user consumer. 

Product stewardship means "responsibly managing the health, safety, and environmental aspects of raw materials, intermediate, and consumer products throughout their life cycle and across the value chain in order to prevent or minimize negative impacts and maximize value" [7], Chapter 2 of this book discusses the technical tools that a product steward uses to achieve this goal. These tools include the techniques to characterize and predict the fate and transport of chemicals in the environment upon their manufacture and use. The tools also include the methods used to calculate the possible risks to human health and the environment that may result. Chapter 2 also describes the formal process of life cycle assessment, which uses these tools to evaluate the potential effects on the environment as a result of the production, use, and disposal or recycling of a product. 

Consumers are increasingly aware, not only of their own impact on the environment, but also that of the products and businesses they use. As a result consumers are looking to your products to offer transparent value chains, high quality, harmless and environmentally safe credentials. 

While in first moment the method seems to be perfect to bring fuel cells closer to commercial use, operator of this method have to deal with negative aspects too. One of them is the long value chain to create a catalyst containing electrode that can consume the savings at the catalyst purchase side. Further users have to handle the enhanced need for safety issues depending on the precursor toxic by-products of the electrode fabrication. 

The environmental performance of bioplastics may be a competitive factor when they are compared with traditional, fossil-based plastics. Like all materials conceived for a wide range of industrial applications, including being major components in consumer products, bioplastics interact with the environment in several steps throughout their value chain. Due to this reason, the environmental performance of bioplastics is investigated with the life cycle thinking approach and its related quantitative method life cycle assessment (LCA). 

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