...Applichem was a specialty chemical manufacturer and the market leader for its main product named Release-ease. Release-ease was a chemical which was added to plastic molding compound, helping separate molded parts and the mold in an easier and cleaner manner. There were different requirements for Release-ease over regions. In Europe, customers preferred packages of 50 kilos and used products within 12-month shelf life. Whereas, in the U.S. and other regions, customers purchased packages from 0.5 kilo and product shelf life could range from 1 to 3 years. Applichem had four plants: Gary (the U.S.), Frankfurt, Mexico, Sunchem (Japan). The management team was thinking that Gary plant was operating ineffectively. Therefore the company conducted a study to compare the performance of the four plants. Competitive environment analysis Applichem was dominant in market share globally and had advantage of the earliest registered patents. However, competitive environment contained potential threats: First, market demand for Release-ease was forecasted to be flat in the incoming five years. The slow growth of market implied that Applichem had to be efficient and competitive to maintain the current market share. Second, the biggest competitor, a U.S.-based company locating their only plant in Luxembourg, performed very well in Europe. Meanwhile, the requirement of product quality and specifications in Europe is not homogeneous with other ...
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...AppliChem Case 4 - AppliChem Performance Measures Capacity Raw material cost Operating cost ($ Utility cost ($ per ($ per 100 lbs of per 100 lbs of million lbs of Total Cost Release-ease) Release-ease) Release-ease) Utilization rate (%) Production Avarage yield on raw material (%) Mexico 27 17,2 63,7 75,05 13,7 12,012 88,75 94,7 Frankfurt 47 38 80,85 53 15,91 11,116 68,91 98,9 Gary 26 14 53,85 60,83 22,16 19,365 85,64 90,4 5 4 80 91,86 50,56 36,675 142,42 98,8 Sunchem Comparison of the plants Total labour / Volume 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 Mexico Germany USA Japan Direct labour/Volume Indirect labour/Volume 4 5 3 4 2 3 1 2 1 0 Mexico Germany USA Japan 0 Mexico Germany USA Japan Comparison of the plants • Capacity Utilization 50 45 40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 Mexico Germany USA Utilization Capacity Japan Comparison of the plants • Cost (USD)/lbs 1,6 1,4 1,2 1 0,8 0,6 0,4 0,2 0 Mexico Frankfurt (Germany) Gary (USA) Sunchem (Japan) Comparison of the plants • Summary Country/Plant Characteristics Mexico Very high efficiency Germany Highest capacity, very high efficiency USA Lowest utilization Japan Highest cost/lbs, lowest efficiency Currency development Mexico (Mexican Pesos /...
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...Applichem | November 8 BUAD 6600 | SCMers Meagan Frances AyersJames FranksEmelie HallJean-Hubert Trahan | Instructor: Sachin Modi | Objective/Scope The purpose of this article is to determine whether or not Applichem should keep their production of Release-Ease within their current plants or move production to another location. This new location would be one, or more, of Applichems’ production locations including: Gary (Indiana/USA), Mexico, Frankfurt (Germany/Europe), Sunchem (Japan). To determine this, a cost analysis must be conducted to verify the benefits of keeping production of Release-Ease in their current locations, or moving production to another location. When determining the cost benefits, transportation and production cost differences must be considered. Recommendations Through careful analysis, it is recommended that Production of Release-ease be maintained in Gary, Indiana. Instead of abandoning the Gary production facility due to its lack of production efficiencies, measures to improve the facility should be implemented. Ceasing production of Release-ease in Japan is also recommended. Although the plant in Japan is more technologically advanced, its high production costs and low productivity levels are valid reasons for eliminating the Release-ease production lines. It is recommended, however, that the plant continues its current production of the other product it manufactures. The plant will also be useful in conducting R&D for...
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...Manufacturing Plants Applichem has four plants spread across US, Europe and Asia. Their nature and performance is discussed below and summarized in Table (1) : Gary Plant It is the company's first large manufacturing facility. It had designed capacity of 26 million pounds a year and produced 18 million in 1982 with 1000 non-union workers. Advantages: * The plant has very loyal employees, which can lead to low employee turnover rates. Not only are employees loyal to Applichem as a company, but they are also loyal to the plant manager as well. This can be an implication of how well Gary plant employees will react when new production process and training programs are implemented. Disadvantages: * The equipment used for the production of Release-ease was installed between 1959 and 1964, which is outdated according to an estimated useful technical life of 20 years. * Gary has 8 different formulations for Release-ease. * Release-ease is produced in 80 different package sizes. * The Gary plant produces 19 other products other than Release-ease. The plant was also designed to be a batch operation, not a streamline operation, which causes production to switch between different product lines. Frankfurt Plant The plant supplied in Europe, Middle East and Africa and other Applichem plants. This plant bulk shipped Release-ease to other plants where the product is packaged and shipped to customers. It had 12 product families in addition to Applichem and a deigned...
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...1. INTRODUCTION Applichem, a manufacturer of specialty chemicals founded in Chicago, had developed a unique product Release-ease to help in formulating a plastic molding compound which released easily from metal molds after compression molding. Applichem had held the patent for it and the product family had been a steady sales and profit generator for the company through 1982. The company has 6 manufacturing plants: 3 in North America (Gary, Canada and Mexico), 1 in Western Europe (Frankfurt), 1 in Latin America (Venezuela) and 1 in Pacific and Rest of the world (Sunchem). Due to variations in number of product lines manufactured, number of packaging varieties, capacities of plants, plant redesigns and regional laws, Applichem experienced large differences in the performance of the manufacturing plants in terms of average yield of raw material and profitability. 2. CURRENT PERFORMANCE Plants Market Designed capacity (Million Lb) 1982 Production (Million Lb) Idle capacity (Million Lb) Capacity Utilization Yield Last update in Equipment Mexico North America 22 17.2 4.8 78.18% 94.70% 1978 Canada North America 3.7 2.6 1.1 70.27% 91.10% 1955 Venezuela Latin America 4.5 4.1 0.4 91.11% 91.70% 1964 Frankfurt Western Europe 47 38 9 80.85% 98.90% 1974 Gary North America 18.5 14 4.5 75.67% 90.40% 1964 Sunchem Pacific 5 4 1 80% 98.80% 1969 The percentage of distribution of Applichem across the plants was as follows: 3. PROCESS FLOW Release-ease was manufactured using...
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...Just in Time for the Holidays VIEW MORE FROM THE December 2005 Issue EXPLORE THE ARCHIVE RECOMMENDED Applichem (A) (Abridged) TECHNOLOGY & OPERATIONS CASE Janice H. Hammond, Gary P. Pisano 8.95 ADD TO CART SAVE SHARE Solagen: Process Improvement in the Manufacture of Gelatin at Kodak TECHNOLOGY & OPERATIONS CASE Dorothy Leonard-Barton, Brian J. Delacey 8.95 ADD TO CART SAVE SHARE Queuing Theory to the Rescue: Managing Security Screening Lines at Logan Airport TECHNOLOGY & OPERATIONS CASE Mark Fagan, Dante Perez 8.95 ADD TO CART SAVE SHARE A biting wind whips around the sprawling manufacturing campus at North Pole Workshops. The streets between the solid brick buildings are covered in fluffy white snow. Flurries swirl against the steely gray sky of a late November morning. But the soft glow of light from the windows and steady hum of machinery hint at the productivity inside. Buildings 1 and 2 house the company’s massive mail facility, where children’s letters to Santa are sorted and matched against a database that tracks the writers’ behavior over the course of the year. Inside Building 3, gleaming steel equipment moves board games and Erector sets toward pallets where they are shrink-wrapped and readied for distribution on Christmas Eve. Red garland is draped across the windows that line the outer walls, though none of the busy elves seems to notice the festive touch. A large man in a red suit walks among the workers. His smiles and...
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...ANALYTICAL BIOCHEMISTRY Analytical Biochemistry 334 (2004) 196–198 www.elsevier.com/locate/yabio Notes & Tips A spectrophotometric assay for the quantiWcation of polyethylenimine in DNA nanoparticles Martin Bertschinger, Sophie Chaboche, Martin Jordan¤, Florian M. Wurm Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne, Laboratory of Cellular Biotechnology, Lausanne VD1015, Switzerland Received 29 April 2004 Available online 28 August 2004 Since the Wrst description of polyethylenimine (PEI)1 as a gene delivery vehicle, there has been a strong interest in its use for in vivo and in vitro transfections of mammalian cells [1]. The mechanism of gene transfer by PEI is still unclear, and little is known about the formation of PEI– DNA nanoparticles. Such questions are diYcult to address because a rapid and sensitive assay for the quantiWcation of PEI in diVerent transfection media is not available. The only spectrophotometric assay for the quantiWcation of PEI is based on the dark blue cuprammonium complex that is formed when copper(II) ions are added to PEI [2,3]. This complex has a strong absorbance peak at 285 nm and a weaker one at 630 nm. Unfortunately, the absorption maximum at 285 nm is close to that of DNA (260 nm). In addition, most cell culture media contain components that absorb at this wavelength. At 630 nm, there is much less interference from biological molecules, but the signal from the cuprammonium complex is also low. We successfully adapted a commercially...
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...CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY 3.1 Study Design This research is an experimental study which was conducted to investigate the effectiveness of treatment of Cassia alata as antioxidant effects in cardiovascular system of hyperglycemic rats. The antioxidant activity was tested from the leaf of Cassia alata using its aqueous extract. For this study, 30 Wistar rats weighing between 180 to 200g were used. They were housed in standard cages in a room with a 12 hour light/dark cycle and 50 to 60% relative humidity at a temperature of about 30°C. The animals had fed with standard food and water without limit. This study was conducted in two groups of streptozotocin (STZ) induced diabetic rats in which each group will consist of 15 rats. For the first group of STZ induced diabetic rats had fed with Cassia alata aqueous extract for 20 days meanwhile for the second group of STZ induced diabetic rats had fed with normal saline as a negative control for 20 days. The two groups of STZ induced diabetic had divided into 2 batches. First batch of diabetic rats was consisted of 6 rats for both groups while the second batch was consisted of 9 rats for both groups. All of the rats in two groups had fasted for 12 hour before induced diabetic via STZ injection. After an injection, the rats with level of fasting blood sampling (FBS) above 200 mg/dl will take for further investigation. Henceforth, the treatment was began in which the Cassia alata aqueous extract will administer orally after 48 hour diabetic...
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...Class: 1 Type: Lecture Introduction Nobody will dispute the fact that operations are becoming increasingly international or even global in nature. Less clear, though, is what this actually means for operations. Drivers of globalization include increased competitiveness through offshore manufacturing and increased sales by expanding into new markets, but the associated opportunities and challenges are totally different and highly industry-dependent. Clearly, the issues facing a hi-tech firm are different than those facing a global consulting firm, software is a different ballgame than textile, etc. "Global operations" can refer to, among others, global sourcing, to having manufacturing or service or R&D facilities world-wide, or to supplying global markets, each of which have very different ramifications: Global sourcing Global manufacturing Global distribution . dealing with foreign . facility location . local content regulations suppliers . coordinating networks . managing global . managing international of plants distribution logistics . coordinating networks . managing risk . managing risk of R&D facilities . operations in other countries Page intentionally left blank. Class: 2a Type: Lecture Supply Chain Management & Service The goal in this part is to introduce the two main sections of the course, international...
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...Transportation Research Part E 41 (2005) 531–550 www.elsevier.com/locate/tre Global supply chain design: A literature review and critique Mary J. Meixell a a,* , Vidyaranya B. Gargeya b,1 School of Management, Enterprise Hall, MSN 5F4, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA 22030-4444, United States b Information Systems and Operations Management Department, 479, Bryan Building, The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro, NC 27402, United States Abstract In this paper, we review decision support models for the design of global supply chains, and assess the fit between the research literature in this area and the practical issues of global supply chain design. The classification scheme for this review is based on ongoing and emerging issues in global supply chain management and includes review dimensions for (1) decisions addressed in the model, (2) performance metrics, (3) the degree to which the model supports integrated decision processes, and (4) globalization considerations. We conclude that although most models resolve a difficult feature associated with globalization, few models address the practical global supply chain design problem in its entirety. We close the paper with recommendations for future research in global supply chain modeling that is both forward-looking and practically oriented. Ó 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Supply chain design; Globalization; Outsourcing; Supply chain integration; International sourcing ...
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...Transportation Research Part E 41 (2005) 531–550 www.elsevier.com/locate/tre Global supply chain design: A literature review and critique Mary J. Meixell a a,* , Vidyaranya B. Gargeya b,1 School of Management, Enterprise Hall, MSN 5F4, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA 22030-4444, United States b Information Systems and Operations Management Department, 479, Bryan Building, The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro, NC 27402, United States Abstract In this paper, we review decision support models for the design of global supply chains, and assess the fit between the research literature in this area and the practical issues of global supply chain design. The classification scheme for this review is based on ongoing and emerging issues in global supply chain management and includes review dimensions for (1) decisions addressed in the model, (2) performance metrics, (3) the degree to which the model supports integrated decision processes, and (4) globalization considerations. We conclude that although most models resolve a difficult feature associated with globalization, few models address the practical global supply chain design problem in its entirety. We close the paper with recommendations for future research in global supply chain modeling that is both forward-looking and practically oriented. Ó 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Supply chain design; Globalization; Outsourcing; Supply chain integration; International sourcing ...
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