Master-batch approach

Among the contrarians, Bayer has had for historical reasons a different approach to the problem of remaining a well-rounded producer of chemicals. It has always been a leader in such specialty chemicals as plastics and rubber additives and supplies master batches through its subsidiary Rhein Chemie. Its polymers are mainly centered on synthetic elastomers and specialty plastics like polyurethanes and polycarbonates that Bayer itself develops. These are not subjected to the cutthroat competition that commodity thermoplastics are. Bayer has remained involved in aroma chemicals with a well-known subsidiary, Haarmann Reimer. In pharmaceuticals the company occupies an honorable rank, although in the future its management may want to separate that branch from the rest of its activities in preparation for further alliances. Like BASF, Bayer considers its agrochemical line as a core business. However, unlike BASF, it is less interested in integrating upstream production to oil raw... 

The order of component addition is important. The mixing of concentrated anionic and nonionic surfactants must be avoided because it produces gels that dissolve very slowly. Typically, a master batch of nonionic surfactant, initiator, and LMA was prepared for use with all the solutions of a series of experiments. This approach ensures that the small concentration components are all at the same concentration. To a portion of this well-mixed master batch was added more nonionic surfactant if necessary, propanamide (if used), water to about 80 g, anionic surfactant, mercaptoethanol, and water to 100 g, with stirring as appropriate. 

As the hydrophilic clay is incompatible with polypropylene, compatibilization between the clay and PP is necessary to form stable PP nanocomposites. There are two ways to compatibilize the clay and PP. In the first approach, the enthalpy of the interaction between the surfactant and the clay is reduced. In the second approach, a compatibilizer, such as maleic anhydride grafted PP (PPgMA) can be used( Manias et al.,2001). The clay is melt compounded with the more polar compatibilizer to form an intercalated master batch. The master batch is then compounded with the neat PP to form the PP nanocomposite. 

From an aggregate plan, a planner must disaggregate the available information and build a rough master production schedule (MPS) that identifies the batches produced in each period at the level of each product family. We return to the Red Tomato example to illustrate a simple approach to disaggregate an aggregate plan. Although this approach is not necessarily optimal, it is simple to implement and allows for a feasibility check. More sophisticated methods (e.g., see Bitran and Hax, 1981) are available if a planner wants to search for better solutions. These methods, however, are difficult to implement and may not be able to reflect all the complex realities. For this reason, we propose this simple approach. 

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