Market-product-operation combinations

A sphere is a market-product-operation combination that provides a way to divide and conquer in developing and implementing supply chain processes that serve customers better. The term sphere derives from the fact that a sphere has three dimensions — markets, products, and operations — described in Table 6.6. Identifying spheres draws boundaries around the supply chain, helps decide what organization model to follow, and defines what customer-serving processes are needed. All three of these are vital to successful SCM. 

Section 6.6 described spheres, or businesses within the business. Spheres are the market-product-operations combinations that justify their own supply chain design. The sphere framework is particularly useful in deciding the role for globalization in supply chain design. Here we use the examples in Chapter 6 to apply the tool to developing global supply chains. 

These businesses within the business, described in Section 6.6, divide the supply chain into market-product-operations combinations. So the charter should list each of the markets, each of the products, and each of the operations that will be incorporated into the supply chain effort. A larger company will have many options to add or delete parts of their business. In the interest of having a manageable effort — that is, a project that is neither too narrow to have an impact nor too big to complete — is likely to speed implementation in focused areas. 

Spheres, addressed in Section 6.6 and Chapter 9, are market-product-operations combinations that warrant separate supply chain designs. Spheres are especially important if existing supply chain processes have evolved into one-size-fits-all functional processes. This is quite common having separate supply chains for different market or product needs is relatively rare. 

The notion of combining sales with support services lies at the core of the marketing and operations interface, but it is not exclusive to the Internet (see e.g., Ak in and Harker, 1999). However, the Internet s customer-driven approach to product information, mass-customization capabilities, and asynchronous communication modes make it a better suited channel for that practice since it allows more accurate targeting and is less intrusive than other contact modes (e.g., Anderson, 2000 reported that among customers purchasing a new computer at IBM, 80% sign up voluntarily for newer product information emails as part of product support). 

Chapter 18 described several examples of the use of spheres to organize a supply chain improvement effort. A sphere is combination of products, markets, and operations. The prestudy (Chapter 30) should identify the spheres before applying fhe fhree phase approach. 

Most of the HCl produced is consumed captively, ie, at the site of production, either in integrated operations such as ethylenedichloride—vinyl chloride monomer (EDC/VCM) plants and chlorinated methane plants or in separate HCl consuming operations at the same location. Captive use of anhydrous HCl accounted for 80—85% of the total demand in 1989. The combined merchant market for anhydrous and aqueous HCl in that same year was about 9.1 X 10 metric tons on the basis of 100% HCl (see Table 12) (73). 

There is mote than one way to make PV systems cost effective, ie, by making mote efficient and less expensive devices, by stimulating the market toward higher sales in order to justify production volume increases to achieve economies of scale, and by combinations of these options. In any case, modules must operate tehably for long periods of time. 

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