Geographical Focus

Because of globalisation, it is no longer easy to divide the world s plastics industry into self-contained geographic zones such as North America, Europe and the Asia-Pacific region. So, although the author has concentrated mostly on issues that are important in Europe (both Western and Eastern Europe), he has often referred to relevant trends in North America and Asia. However, Asian references are largely limited to China, India and Japan. 

Political and economic changes in Europe mean that it is now desirable to cite consmnption figures for the whole European continent, or in some cases for the newly-enlarged Eiuopean Union. But previous published data have nearly always referred either to Western Europe, or to regions variously described as Central and Eastern or just Eastern Europe. This means that comparisons with the past will be difficult to make, until the new situation is clearer. 

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Perkin, an Englishman, working under a German professor, Hoffman, discovered the first synthetic dye, and even today the geographical focus of dye production lies in Germany (BASF, Dystar), England (Avecia), and Switzerland (Clar-iant, Ciba Specialties). Far Eastern countries, such as Japan, Korea, and Taiwan, as well as countries such as India, Brazil, and Mexico, also produce dyes. 

Transportation systems can be categorized into modes defined by the type of inliastructure needed to run them. Buses, for example, need a fleet of vehicles and a network of roads and streets. Systems that need rails include trains, subways, light rail and monorail (considered separate categories from standard train systems such as commuter rail), and streetcars and trams. Ferries are used in many cities with extensive waterfront areas. Airports also fall within the domain of transportation engineering. While most transportation systems are designed with the needs of a geographically focused population in mind, airports are unique in that they serve passengers from all over the country—or the world. 

Giuliano Russo is Assistant Professor of Health Economics and Policy at Lisbon s Instituto de Higiene e Medicina Tropical. He has over 15 years of professional experience in the academia, public sector and pharmaceutical industry in Europe, Africa and Latin America. His recent research has focussed on the economics of human resources for health, on health systems and pharmaceutical markets in low-income settings, and on health-aid architecture, with a geographical focus on Portuguesespeaking coimtries. 

I have adapted the term the four riverbanks from Buccellati (1990a), since it expresses the geographic focus of this discussion without implying in any way the cultural or political priority of one region over the other and is thus to be preferred to terms such as Northern and Southern Mesopotamia, or Mesopotamia and the Jazireh. 1 extend its compass a little farther than Buccellati, however, to include all of the land between the rivers and, for their outer perimeters, the steppe beyond only the river valley itself as far as Ebla to the west... 

Opportunities for time- or cost-efficiencies. If several of your company s facilities are concentrated in a relatively small geographic area, it may make sense to focus on them as a group, particularly under a com-pan)nvide approach. 

Measured data on environmental concentrations and human health are scarce and scattered. Hence, environmental modeling was applied in order to generate an overview over the distribution of selected hazardous substances due to informal recycling in Guiyu. As all available models have a specific focus and various pros and cons, four models were chosen, which cover different geographical scales and address different environmental compartments and objectives in order to assess the potential risk of the selected chemicals to humans and the environment. 

Customer order schedules need to be integrated with deliveries, production orders and procurement orders. Volumes and values are already defined. Therefore, the focus is on a time schedule of orders considering production and distribution lead times. Fig. 21 illustrates the main task in value chain operations also now focused on a geographical region such as Europe. The individual schedules of sales orders and purchase orders have to be integrated with distribution and production schedules. 

Geographical topography Geographical configuration Value creation focus... 

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