Disaggregation value chain

Management concepts in the value chain are the generally relevant research fields for the work. Value chain as a term was initially defined by Porter disaggregating a firm into its strategically relevant activities in order to understand the behavior of costs and the existing and potential sources of differentiation . Porter s value chain consists of a "set of activities that are performed to design, produce, market, deliver and support its product (Porter 1985, pp. 33-40). Developed management concept areas for the value chain can be classified by specialization on values, demand or supply ... 

At a more disaggregated level a deconstruction of the core value chain can be considered (for example to focus certain plants on specific process steps). In a first step all technically separable elements of the value chain should be identified and their respective processing characteristics established. To illustrate the concept behind this analysis, the State-Task-Network of the pilot application value chain depicted in Figure 36 is revisited in Figure 41. For example, after completion of t7 the product is dried... 

Some recent discussion centers on the impact the New Economy will have on the structure of chemical companies. We believe that the Internet will contribute to the disaggregation of the value chain touched on above, opening up opportunities for chemical companies to take on board partners for those parts of the value chain that can best be served by others. However, given the size and global reach of chemical businesses, we also think that global business divisions will remain at the core of these network-type configurations for some time to come. 

Without component commonality and postponement, product differentiation occurs early on in the supply chain, and most of the supply chain inventories are disaggregate. Postponement allows the supply chain to delay product differentiation. As a result, most of the inventories in the supply chain are aggregate. Postponement thus allows a supply chain to exploit aggregation to reduce safety inventories without hurting product availability. We illustrate the benefits of postponement in Example 12-12 (see worksheet Example 12-12). A more nuanced discussion of the value of postponement is given in Chapter 13. 

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