Demand penetration points

In many cases companies have an inadequate visibility of real demand. By real demand we mean the demand in the final marketplace, not the derived demand that is filtered upstream through any intermediary organisations that may lie between the company and the final user. The challenge is to find a way to receive earlier warning of the customers requirements. What we frequently find is that, firstly, the demand penetration point is too far down the pipeline and, secondly, real demand is hidden from view and all we tend to see are orders. Both these points need further explanation we will deal with the concept of the demand penetration point first. 

The simplest definition of the demand penetration point is that it occurs at that point in the logistios chain where real demand meets the plan. Upstream from this point everything is driven by a forecast and/or a plan. Downstream we can respond to customer demand. Clearly in an ideal world we would like everything to be demand-driven so that nothing is purchased, manufactured or shipped unless there is a known requirement. The demand penetration point is often referred fo as fhe decoupling point and is ideally the point in the supply chain where strategic inventory is held. 

Figure 4.4 Demand penetration points and strategic inventory... 

Order penetration point The point in a product s flow when an item is earmarked for a particular customer. Downstream processes are driven by customer orders upstream processes are driven by forecasts and plans. However, the plans themselves can reflect actual customer orders in a demand-driven supply chain. (Adapted from APICS Dictionary, lOtb edition )... 

Using the principle of order decoupling (order penetration point) is one way of responding to demand volatility in real time. For example, in a build-to-order (BTO) environment the supplier builds the product from scratch (component... 

Another useftil concept is flux. Flux is defined as the number of molecules penetrating a unit area of an imaginary plane in a unit of time. The usual units are mol/(cm2 s), and the sign identifies the direction of motion, positive toward and negative away from the plane. The prior assertion that equilibrium demands no net mass transport is equivalent to a requirement that the sum of the fluxes of all components is exactly zero at any test plane within the system. Flux is a measure of the rate of mass transport at a fixed point. Its electrochemical relevance stems from the direct relationship it holds to electrode current. 

The creation of drug-like molecules capable of CNS penetration from these starting points would be a challenging task. This will be made harder as room for maneuver is limited by the likely demands for isoform selectivity. For a comprehensive review of delivery of peptide and protein drugs across the blood-brain barrier, see [65]. Notably, Ghadiri and co-workers exploited this structural class and have developed an efficient synthetic access to one-bead-one-compound combinatorial libraries of cyclic tetrapeptide analogs with promising subtype selectivity [66, 67]. 

The demands related to the prolonged operation of the PHENIX reactor have led us to focus on hypothetical defects which, in the various operating conditions envisioned, might question the principle safety functions, and among these, the control of the reactivity. Therefore the extension of such defects, penetrating the great shells which make up the core support structure, had to be evaluated. In order to facilitate their early detection, the geometric disorders associated with much shorter defects constituted another point of interest in the specification of surveillance methods. 

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