Hard infrastructure requirements

The objective of Phase III is to select a set of desirable potential sites within each region where facilities are to be located. Sites should be selected based on an analysis of infrastructure availability to support the desired production methodologies. Hard infrastructure requirements include the availability of suppliers, transportation services, communication, utilities, and warehousing facilities. Soft infrastructure requirements include the availability of a skilled workforce, workforce turnover, and the community receptivity to business and industry. 

Business organisations have variety needs related to IT infrastructure. One of a crucial requirement is accessibihty of information by organisation s user (Michalski 2007). Without access to information business operation is hard and incomplete. Therefore all changes make into company s IT infrastructure should be tested before they would be applied in productive environment. 

For a successful implementation of ECR, different requirements have to be met. First, the identification of strategic objectives by top-management and their internalization within the whole company is the starting point for the implementation of ECR and a sustainable development of a company (Mentzer et al, 2000 Homburg et al, 1997). The so-called 80 20-rule states that the soft facts such as human behaviour and, especially, the commitment of the management are relevant for the success rate of cooperation up to 80 percent. Merely 20 percent depend on the hard facts, such as resources and infrastructure (Von der Heydt, 1999). Different empirical studies emphasise the close relationship between the top-management involvement and conviction and the success of cooperation (Mentzer et al, 2000, Homburg et al, 1997). 

There was a history of a supply disruption of IR to the rubber industry several years ago. IR is now available from the United States, Russia, Japan, China, and other nations. The USSR during the Cold War synthesized large quantities of IR because hard currency was required to procure NR from the outside. This is the reason that Russia today has the infrastructure to produce large quantities of IR. 

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