Responding to changes in the market

This phenomenon has had a dramatic effect on strategic planning within large pharmaceutical companies. The resulting abrupt removal of several billion dollars in annual profits makes the maintenance of a strong research and development portfolio absolutely vital. Much has been written by equity analysts over the years about the relative strengths or weaknesses of companies  

---

The competitive medium sized chemical company will have to make the most of its advantages in the 1970 s. It should be among the first to recognize and respond to changes in the market place, to anticipate and meet new customer requirements, to adapt better distribution methods to its needs and those of its customers, to adjust its product mix as market... 

The challenge to every business is to become a responsive organisation in every sense of the word. The organisation must respond to changes in the market with products and services that provide innovative solutions to customers problems it must respond to volatile demand and it must be able to provide high levels of flexibility in delivery. 

The oil crops have been cultivated since antiquity. Rapeseed was described in the Indian Sanskrit writings of 2000 Bc and sesame seed was already known in ancient times. For the past half century, the cultivation of oil-bearing plants has increased considerably. There are several species of plants in the world whose oil can be utiUzed for human consumption. Although Lennarts (1983) described forty different oilseeds, there are only ten edible oil crops of commercial value in the world market. Seven of these are seed crops (cottonseed, groundnuts, rapeseed, safflower seed, sesame seed, soybeans and sunflower seed), and three are tree crops (coconut, olives and oil palm/kemels). Cultivation of several of these crops (coconut with copra, and oil palm/palm kernels) is limited almost exclusively to developing countries, where the most favourable climatic and soil conditions are available. However, some are annual crops and some are perennial (tree) crops, and these have very different possibilities of responding to changes in the world market. 

To deal with more stringent requirements in terms of energy consumption requires a shift from heat loss minimization toward novel intensified process concepts that intrinsically require less energy. Safety should now be considered as an intrinsic plant property rather than a responsive action, and the plant needs to be flexible to be able to respond quickly to changes in the market. Last but not least, new concepts will be required to provide a basis for sustainable future developments, that is, the use of renewable resources and processes based on green solvents. As a result of this changing focus, a shift toward a multidisciplinary approach can be observed. 

The food producing industry has responded to consumer demand for foods with lower fat content (Table 1). Foods with low or no cholesterol claims leaped 78% from 1980 to 1990, in spite of the fact that many of the principal food producers reduced the amount of new product introductions during 1989 and 1990 (7). Table 2 indicates the change in the market for various food industry segments, especially those suspected as fat problem generators, including dairy and meat foods. Many low fat and low cholesterol foods were created by a dding claims to food that have always been low in fat and/or cholesterol. 

The detailed analysis, involving many respondents inside and outside the company, led to changes in the overall innovation process, ie, a company-wide priority system for innovation projects, measures of innovation for each functional and business area, training and supportive management systems for project managers, informal multifunctional teams in concept development and market development, a stmctured needs identification process, and appointment of a process steward to monitor the innovation process, measure how it functions, and coordinate innovation projects. 

How does the job market for air pollution control personnel respond to changes in regulatory requirements and to the state of the economy ... 

The cost of SAP s R/3 for a mid-sized company averages about 750,000, but the implementation costs can be many times the software costs. Typical costs for a full-fledged Fortune 500 firm can typically run about 30 million in hcense fees and 100-200 million in consulting fees (Kirkpatrick 1998). SAP was the first to institute a University Alliance, which fosters the teaching of business courses that use R/3. SAP invests about 20-25% of its revenues in R D. This represents an amount greater than aU the other ERP vendors combined and ensures that it should be able to respond rapidly to changes in the ERP market. 

Generic raw material inventory— Use of generic raw materials helps the company to respond to changes in market demands for its products. Excess inventory of raw materials can be sold easily at the market price. 

The second major change enacted under the 1962 amendment was the change in the approval process from premarket notification to a premarket approval system. Under the terms of the 1938 law, an NDA would take elfect automatically if the FDA did not respond. For example, the only reason thalidomide was not approved was because Dr. Kelsey returned the application to the sponsor with a request for more information. In contrast, the 1962 law required affirmative FDA action before a drug could be put on the market. Under the terms of the 1962 amendments, the FDA was also empowered to withdraw NDA approval and remove the drug from the market for a variety of reasons, including new evidence that the product was unsafe or that the sponsor had misrepresented or under-reported data. 

With these amended costs, the revised prices, quantities and profits of the companies in the market can be calculated. In examining these short-term effects, it is assumed that there are no changes in the number of companies in the market and that companies cannot respond to the policy shocks by changing their costs, i.e. that no abatement takes place. 

These events illustrate how the flexible, well-informed and contractu-alized US gas pipeline market facilitates supply security. In each of the three cases above, the market responded to an exogenous shock to supply and/or demand, the spot price moved according to the local supply and demand for natural gas, and the market was able to clear. In order for this to occur, adequate pipeline capacity must be available as well as able to respond to changing market conditions. 

---