Distributional issues between companies

A particular issue with the costs involved in speeding up logistics processes in the supply chain is the distribution of those costs between companies in the supply chain. It is well known that JIT deliveries, for example, may generate signihcant costs for suppliers whereas the customer may experience most of its benefits (such as low process inventories and rapid delivery). Toyota is capable of manufacturing a car in five days but has decided not to do so because of the pressiue it would place on its suppliers and its distribution processes, creating costs that are not expected to be outweighed by revenue opportunities in current market circumstances. 

Besides the issue of cost relevance, interdependencies between production and distribution networks are often limited for companies already operating global networks. Distribution facilities usually serve major markets... 

A systematic difference was observed by one laboratory between two different sets of calibrants (calibrant solution made with a newer calibrant from the same producer). This highlighted the need to thoroughly verify the calibrant, i.e. not to rely on calibrants from one producer of which the quality could vary from one set to another. Most of the laboratories actually used their own calibrants, which were not verified for purity and stoichiometry. Only one laboratory used the calibrant previously verified and distributed in the first interlaboratory study [8]. It was stressed that calibration was an important issue and that more efforts should be put on the verification of calibrants in future exercises. It was agreed that the coordinator of the project would purchase calibrant from a chemical company and establish its purity sets of verified primary calibrants would then be made available to participants in a further exercise to characterise their own calibrants. 

In this chapter, we have discussed the opportunities for companies to harness the potential of the Internet by coordinating web-based activities with their traditional operations. We have focused on three critical supply chain elements procurement, pricing and distribution/fulfillment. Most of the academic research in this area is quite recent, and hence much of the research we discuss is currently contained in working papers. We have selected to discuss several important papers that have come to our attention, but certainly can t claim to have produced an exhaustive survey of research in this nascent field. Like our colleagues in industry, academic researchers are still in the early stages of understanding the full impact of the Internet. We believe that issues of coordination between traditional and internet supply chains will continue to provide a fertile area for academic research. 

Despite the fact that patents have the prime purpose of protecting intellectual property and commercial rights of individual companies or people, and also those of other organizations, they are a very important vehicle for the spread of information. Patents are bought, sold, and licensed to be used by third parties in the same country or in other countries. In the United States alone, every week about 12 new fuel cell patents are issued. About 500 companies are holders of at least one patent in the field (Khan, 2004). The distribution between countries is highly nonuniform. For instance, of the 1582 general fuel cell patents published in the fourth quarter of 2007,51% came from Japan, 15% from the United States, 9% from South Korea, 6% from China, and about 1% from European countries (Butler, 2008b). 

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