Efficiency, needs selling

Many of the waste streams from U.S. process industries are water containing small quantities of metal ions that the law requires be removed before the wastewater is disposed of There is an economic incentive to recoup at least some of the cost of wastewater treatment by recovering and selling the metal content instead of merely disposing of the metals as sludge. Because the waste streams are dilute in desired materials, research is needed to devise efficient extraction and separation processes. 

Russia, a developed country, is part of the Annex 1 bloc of countries committed to cutting emissions under the protocol. But its economy has shrunk so drastically since 1990 that it cannot afford to bum the fuel that would produce the emissions Kyoto entitles it to. Its emissions have fallen by almost 40% in a decade. So it favours emissions trading, selling its unused entitlement to developed countries wanting to emit more than the protocol allows them. Russia will ratify Kyoto, because it recognises it as a way of earning desperately needed money. It plans to use the cash for energy efficiency projects. 

All of these chemicals are, of course, available through chemical supply houses. The trouble is that many of these houses do not sell to individuals but only to schools and established laboratories. Also, the chemicals usually come in a standard amount of 34lb. — or even 1 lb. — where, in home experiments, you would need 1 ounce or less. The same is often the case when you buy chemicals in a local store. The minimum-sized packages or jars may be so large that you couldn t possibly use up the contents in a year of experiments. You will probably also have to repack what you actually need into glass jars of suitable size for efficiency and to fit your storage space. 

There are several reasons for building a second pipeline first, valuable recycle flows can be efficiently transported to downstream users who would not mind the variable ratio and concentration of inert gases. Thereby, in upstream industrial processes the need for recycle equipment ceases to exist. The upstream producers could generate some income by selling their recycle flows. 

In a cost-conscious world, companies have to be efficient to survive, and products need to be competitive to satisfy the consumer. Where two products compete for the same market, and in the same price bracket, the consumer will search for some advantage to aid the final product choice. Quality is the advantage normally chosen, and this fact is as relevant to the purchasing and selling organisation of the large national and international company as it is to the domestic consumer. 

Suppose you work in a candy store that sells gourmetjelly beans by the bean. People come in and ask for 50 beans, 100 beans, 1000 beans, and so on, and you have to count them out— a tedious process at best. As a good problem solver, you try to come up with a better system. It occurs to you that it might be far more efficient to buy a scale and count the jelly beans by weighing them. How can you countjelly beans by weighing them What information about the individual beans do you need to know ... 

Supply chain excellence has evolved. The definition has morphed from the efficient supply chain to a market-driven value network. Today, the concept of a market-driven value network is largely aspirational. It is a new goal. As supply risks and costs have grown, companies realize that a demand-driven approach is not sufficient. The focus needs to be about more than the channel, instead, the supply chain needs to be driven through strong horizontal processes bidirectionally from market to market. Accomplishing the goal requires a redefinition of both buy-side and sell-side processes, and the use of new forms of analytics to sense, shape, and orchestrate bidirectionally market to market. 

The other dimension in Figure 9.3 is value. Value, in this application, is the product s importance either to the customer or to the company. High-value products sell for high prices and generate profits for the company. As described in Section 5.1.3, innovative products, by definition, are high value (quadrants I and II) while functional products are often low value (quadrants III and IV). Innovative products need responsive supply chains while functional products need efficient ones. 

These have a natural economic interpretation. Conditions (5.7) and (5.9) state that the allocation must maximize the payoff for every agent at the prices. Condition (5.8) states that the seller must sell every item with a positive price, and maximize the payoff to the seller at the prices. The prices are said to support the efficient allocation. A seller can announce an efficient allocation and CE prices, and let every agent verify that the allocation maximizes its own payoff at the prices. In practice we will need an auction to provide incentives for agents to reveal the information about their valuations, and to converge towards a set of CE prices. 

The selling price of plastics additives depends on the same factors as any other chemicals, i.e., the energy and raw material costs, research and development costs, the complexity, scale and efficiency of the manufacturing process, labour rates, sales tax and import duties, costs of product testing and regulation, freight costs, the state of customer inventories, market size and the extent of the customers need for, and dependence on, the product. 

Green Biocatalysts for Production of Atorvastatin Codexis, Inc. has developed an enzyme-based process that has greatly improved the yield, efficiency, and safety record for manufacture of atorvastatin, the key building block for Lipitor , one of the world s best-selling drugs, that lowers cholesterol by blocking its synthesis in the liver. The new enzymatic process is dramatically faster and more efficient than previous methods, and also reduces cyanide-related waste, the use of solvents, and the need for purification equipment. 

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