Description of Supply Chain

4 Monomer Feedstock Supply Chain 10.4.1 Description of Supply Chain 

There are also several smaller players/regions (the residual 8.1%) who are increasing their production and might play a role in the near future. At the moment, the market is clearly dominated by India with yields nearly twice as high as in Brazil. 

Castor bean is indeed cultivated at commercial operations in India, but cannot yet be considered as a plantation crop. Most cultivation plots are operated by small family farms and in many cases as a secondary (crop) source of income. Its low maintenance nature and Gujarat s ideal growing conditions facilitate this behaviour. In this respect, weather patterns and more particularly the onset of the monsoon season, are critical for predicting the season s harvest. While it cannot be classified as such, to a certain extent castor oil is already being treated as a commodity crop and is influenced by speculation [12], The impact of pricing will be covered in the next section. 

In 2010, the worldwide castor oilseed production was over 1 x 10 tons while the castor oil production amounted to around 600 000 tons [6, 12], Most of the oil is destined for motor lubrication and for use in the cosmetics area. After distribution to the other handful of application fields, only a mere 150 000 tons are allocated for the production of sebacic acid. This quantity leads to approx. 70 000 tons of sebacic acid, of which only roughly 20 000 tons are currently dedicated for polyamides. Even with the additional circa 50 000 tons of castor oil needed for PAl 1, polyamides only represent about 10% of the crop harvest. 

The castor bean is stable and stores well, which gives the option of transporting the oilseed for further processing. Nonetheless, most castor-oil production is decentralized and takes place closer to the cultivation areas. On the other hand, sebacic acid and undecenoic acid production is generally centralized by a few players operating in the vicinity of their distribution markets. The polymerization facilities, if not linked directly to the acid processing plants, are also centralized at key petrochemical hubs. 

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SCOR Supply Chain Operations Reference model. An activity model developed by the Supply-Chain Council to standardize descriptions of supply chain processes. 

Table 2.3 Description of supply chain units for the SCC bike case...

ABC requires definition of supply chain activities, including a cost driver for each. The cost driver is the principal variable associated with the activity. The next subsections are brief descriptions of how this might be done in the supply chain context. Chapter 32 provides additional details. 

Specific attention is needed for the properties of the resulting production system. The examples from the food area have shown that specific requirements exist for food production systems. These may be different for production systems in other application areas, given the nature of supply chains and necessary arrangements, like contracts, referring to the necessary degree of integration and coordination, in these areas. Theories of coordination, social-dynamics, organisation structures, etc., may help to further develop the description of the production system. 

Section 4.2 introduces the concept of reconfigurable supply chains. It is followed by a description of multiple perspectives on supply chain configuration decisionmaking, presented in the form of supply chain configuration problem taxonomy. Finally, an integrated framework supporting supply chain reconfigurability is presented. 

The generic model is intended as an overall description of the supply chain configuration problem. It is constructed according to a thorough analysis of supply chain configuration research reported in Chap. 3 of this book. It captures the most common features of the supply chain configuration problem in a generalized manner. 

In the light of the universality of descriptions dedicated to integration methods and tools, concepts used in supply chain integration need to be presented in more detail. Figure 2.2 presents the visualisation of supply chain areas covered by quoted above solutions. 

To tackle these problems successfully, new concepts will be required for developing systematic modeling techniques that can describe parts of the chemical supply chain at different levels of abstraction. A specific example is the integration of molecular thermodynamics in process simulation computations. This would fulfill the objective of predicting the properties of new chemical products when designing a new manufacturing plant. However, such computations remain unachievable at the present time and probably will remain so for the next decade. The challenge is how to abstract the details and description of a complex system into a reduced dimensional space. 

All concepts can be related to the supply chain planning matrix most of them are a re-branded description of short-term and operative supply chain planning problems. Concluding, SCM reached the highest level of crossfunctional and cross-company orientation of management concepts in the value chain with the emphasis on supply. 

We give only a short description of the three supply chain configurations and their simulation models for details we refer to Persson and Olhager (2002). At the start of our sequential bifurcation, we have three simulation models programmed in the Taylor II simulation software for discrete event simulations see Incontrol (2003). We conduct our sequential bifurcation via Microsoft Excel, using the batch run mode in Taylor II. We store input-output data in Excel worksheets. This set-up facilitates the analysis of the simulation input-output data, but it constrains the setup of the experiment. For instance, we cannot control the pseudorandom numbers in the batch mode of Taylor II. Hence, we cannot apply common pseudorandom numbers nor can we guarantee absence of overlap in the pseudorandom numbers we conjecture that the probability of overlap is negligible in practice. 

Effective assessments will be possible only through close co-operation along the materials supply chain. This approach is, however, of only limited use unless it is taken in parallel with a more realistic assessment of the real potential for exposure of consumers to these substances. The traditional approach is to use a series of worst-case assumptions which, whilst workable for most intentionally added substances, becomes um-ealistically onerous for these traces of non-intentionally added substances. The need for realistic exposure assessment and a description of some of the tools now emerging to facilitate this is covered elsewhere in this book. 

Summary This chapter describes how to use materials standards in a procurement specification, the types and acceptability of product certifications, the roles of responsible parties in the supply chain, and how to develop accurate computerized descriptions. Also discussed is the issue of replica pans. 

The remainder of this chapter wiU be devoted to a description of some of the available analytical models of manufacturing and service systems and supply chains. The discussion will emphasize analytical models that yield a formula-type result, as such results are most readily implementable. When no formula exists, we will outline the general principles of the computation algorithms. We will also illustrate a number of approximate approaches for determining performance. 

Consider a supply chain consisting of a single manufacturer who produces a product and sells it to a retailer, who, in turn, sells the product to the final customer. Suppose that in order to produce the product, the manufacturer has to choose to reserve a capacity level A"at a cost per unit of Retail price per unit is r, the wholesale price is set at w, and the cost per unit to manufacture is set at c. This notation and description we follow is from Ozer and Wei [81]. 

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