Right Investments

On average, companies invest 1.7 percent of revenues on information technology and 2.8 percent of revenue on R D. Across the board, there is an expectation by supply chain leaders that projects must drive a return on investment (ROl). But does this stunt the potential of the supply chain The data in the first three decades of supply chain leadership says yes. 

For leaders like Dell, Procter Gamble, and Toyota, there is an understanding that there is also a need for investment in process innovation in supply chain teams to drive business differentiation. There are active teams to find, to source, and to evaluate new technologies and approaches to improve the supply chain potential. 

65 percent of manufactnring companies have a COE. The greatest gap is in the building of strong horizontal processes. These teams are hamstrung by the lack of global governance models, the lack of clarity on supply chain excellence, and the lack of a multiyear 

Definition of best practices for process Definition of supply chain metrics Supply chain planning Inventory strategies Facilitation of horizontal processes, like S OP Evaluation of new technologies Network design Establishment of goals Supplier development Other 

The average supply chain center of excellence has 6 functions from the list above. 

---

To make biomass conversion and biorefming happen, all the players in the value chain have to contribute to improving efficiency and ensuring that the right investments are made. 

To run the race for Supply Chain 2020, companies need to train. Like an athlete training for a competition, the teams need to be agile, to listen to coaching, and to make the right investments. Most organizations need to work on these three behaviors to have the right stuff to win the race. 

Poor families with children with low levels of health and education benefit the most from CCT programs. These are families that may not make the right investments in their children s human capital by not taking them to health posts for checkups and vaccinations and/or not sending them to school. The beneficiaries should include families not only... 

The acquisition of the rights to the viscose process became one of the most profitable investments of aU time. Interest in the new fiber was intense, and growth of production capacity was exponential. By 1907, the Courtauld company was selling aU the artificial sHk it could produce and proceeded to expand into the U.S. market. In 1910 they formed the American Viscose Co. and in 1911 started the first U.S. viscose factory at Marcus Hook. By 1939, Courtaulds had six factories in the United States, seven in the United Kingdom, one in Erance, one in Canada, and joint ventures in Germany and Italy. 

Fig. 1. Annual money flows diagram. Outflows are to the left, ie, total capital investment, and are negative. Inflows are to the right, ie, sales revenues, and...

Eany Common stockholders take the ultimate risk in a business ecause they have no right to a return on their investment. However, they have the right to elect the direciors of the company, who in turn are responsible for the management of the business. Stockholders are likely to vote the board of direciors out if adequate dividends are not paid. Usually the hability of stockholders is limited to the nominal, or par, value of their stock, and hence they can lose only what they have already paid for the stock. If the hability is not hmited by law, the personal assets of the stockholders are at risk in the event of company bankruptcy, in proportion to the amount of stock held. 

This term is most familiar to people as the return on investment, or ROI. The ROI is defined as the interest rate that would result in a return on the invested capital equivalent to the project s return. For illustration, if we had an air abatement project where heat recovery was involved, and there was an overall ROI of 30 percent, that s financially equivalent to investing resources in the right stock and having its price go up 30 percent. This is called a Primitive ROI. ... 

Do it once = do it right. The process outlined here requires a front-loaded level of effort to ensure that the solutions you determine will hold up over time. In many companies this deliberate approach to problem-solving runs counter to a more action-oriented" culture, and there is a strong temptation to fix the problem and get on with it. Keep in mind that the goal here is to develop a process, not to undertake multiple tasks, and consider the time spent in gathering this information as an investment in the longer term value of the resulting PSM system. 

The objective of the production process is to produce the right goods of the right quality and at the right price in order to generate a financial profit from the capital investment, but the plant layout fundamentally affects this objective. 

LIMS is a complex system and requires significant capital and manpower investment. Selection of the right LIMS product is a daunting task, and the outcome can have a significant impact on the business. 

Cost estimation is a specialised subject and a profession in its own right. The design engineer, however, needs to be able to make quick, rough, cost estimates to decide between alternative designs and for project evaluation. Chemical plants are built to make a profit, and an estimate of the investment required and the cost of production are needed before the profitability of a project can be assessed. 

On the right hand side of Figure 13 lines of constant collector array size indicate the storage volume needed to achieve a certain solar fraction. The larger the collector array size, the smaller is the required volume of the stored desiccant for a given solar fraction. The left hand side of Figure 13 shows the related investment costs. A collector array size of 60 m2 and a storage volume of 8.5 m3 turn out to be the most economic solution to achieve 100% solar operation. 

Some environmental degradation can actually be bad for business. The classical example is the laundry firm sited right next door to the coal power plant. Environmental degradation does often have these types of impacts which need to be quantified. Economic impacts can be either large-scale or small-scale impacts. Examples of large-scale impacts are loss of work hours and loss in productivity, investment in cleaning equipment, etc. 

All patents create a monopoly, guaranteeing the innovator s exclusive rights to use and sell the innovation for a fixed period of years. The monopoly revenue during this period is what provides the compensation for the initial investment. Ultimately, the market determines the size of the reward. 

If products under patent are exempted from the RP system, do the negative effects on the R D of the pharmaceutical sector disappear The exclusion of medicines with a current patent may reduce the economic erosion of the rights granted by the patent, and also the disincentive to invest in R D. But negative effects on innovation are not totally eradicated, as (a) RP increases the uncertainty on the expected return on the investment, (b) incentives for innovation will be damaged due to the fact that the R D process is a joint production process, since the overall return is reduced when RP is applied, and (c) the exclusion of patented products has proved to be only partial in some cases (for example, not excluding drags under a process patent). 

---