A Brief Note On Polyethylene : How Does The Industry Work? Essay

This paper will provide an analysis of 2 production scenarios. We will calculate costs associated with running a production facility. Furthermore, the analysis will be used to provide a basic understanding of how changes in staffing and productivity impact profit and loss.

The most common form of polyethylene is petroleum based or olefins based; as before mentioned polyethylene compounds have a wide commercial applicability and are made from non-renewable resources (Harding, Dennis, von Blottnitz, Harrison, & S.T.L., 2007). Its manufacturing processes are regarded as energy intensive and release significant amount of CO2 and heat into the atmosphere (Broderick, 2008). Next a little more detailed description of polyethylene’s production processes will be presented, with a focus on the way the material inputs are extracted and synthesized.

We suggest that we start the analysis process to get some ideas on the cost of renovating the EPC plant to start producing Polypropylene. This would also increase polypropylene production and possibly alleviate the 45 day shut down that is required in the original proposal. Also, it alleviates potential for the EPC plant to lay off employees if a future abandonment of that project took place. EPC employees would be retained and retrained to produce polypropylene.

In the case of Mendel Paper Company which produces four basic paper products lines at one of its plants: computer paper, napkins, place mats, and poster board. Although the plant superintendent, Marlene Herbert is pleases with increased sales he is also concerned about the costs. The superintendent is concerned with the high fixed cost of production, the increases in fixed overhead and even variable overhead. He feels that the production of place mat should be discontinued. His reason for the discontinuation is that the special printing is driving up the variable overhead to the point where the company may not find it profitable to continue with the line. After reviewing the future predictions of the

2.5 Analyze the relationship between productivity and the cost of production. 2.6 Analyze the effect of changes in the supply of and demand for factors of production on the price of inputs. 2.7 Analyze the effect of changes in marginal revenues and costs on a firm’s profit-making potential.

1. What is the competitive situation faced by Wilkerson? The critical product in term of market competition is the pumps of Wilkerson Company. The pumps are Wilkersons major product line with a production of about 12,500 units per month. Pumps currently have the lowest gross margin among all products, because competitors had been reducing prices on pumps and Wilkerson adopted its prices in order to remain competitive and to maintain the volume. 2. Given some apparent problems with Wilkersons cost system, should executives abandon overhead assignment to products entirely by adopting a contribution margin approach in which manufacturing overhead is treated as a period expense? Our conclusion is, that they should not adopt

coating, paper and plastic industries. The company operates many plants and all of which use chloride manufacturing process. Three factors related to production will settle the cost advantage of titanium dioxide manufacturing. They are Economic of Scale, Capacity Utilization Rate and Experience Curve Effects. Economic of Scale : Total Output / Plants Numbers Capacity Utilization Rate : Total Output / Total Capacity Experience Curve Effects : Cumulative Output (production) Each of these factors in the production process has positive but decreasing

Strategies of our firm In oligopoly market, one important method to increase the market share is to keep the price lower than competitors price. However, because at the beginning of the game, our firm ignored the importance of the plant size, process improvement and the training, our production cost was higher than other firms. So we could not use the

With the combination of polymers that don’t biodegrade and mass overproduction, companies are harming the environment in severe ways. Plastic, a material seen everywhere, is a polymer made from oil. It is mass produced to make everything from shampoo bottles to automobiles and does not biodegrade. When it is eventually thrown out, the waste usually finds it way into the ocean, where it is either buried under sediment or eaten by marine life (Weisman 287-295). Creating a material that will ultimately kill marine life will undoubtedly wreak havoc on the

As a world wide major competitor in the chemical industry, Victoria Chemicals is a leading producer of polypropylene, a polymer that is used in a variety of products around the globe. Polypropylene is known for its strength and malleability and was priced as a commodity. The company operates two plants that produce polypropylene, one at Merseyside, England and the other at Rotterdam, Holland. Both plants were identical in scale, design, and age. However, Morris Greystock, the manager for the Merseyside plant saw a decline in the company’s stock, and decided to improve the position of the company. To do that, she came up with a project to increase production efficiency, rationalize the

Polyethylene is the world’s most widely used plastic. Polyethylene plastic’s principal application was in packaging, from trash bags to milk jugs. It was widely used in the manufacture of everything from trash bags, picnic cutlery and garbage pails, to plastic toys. Polyethylene also replaced glass, wood, and metal in certain applications.

Financial results and conditions vary among companies for a number of reasons. One reason for the variation can be traced to the characteristics of the industries in which companies operate. For example, some industries require large investments in property, plant, and equipment (PP&E), while others require very little. In some industries, the competitive productpricing structure permits companies to earn significant profits per sales dollar, while in other industries the product-pricing structure imposes a much lower profit margin. In most low-margin industries, however, companies often experience a relatively high rate of product throughput. A second reason for some of the

Oxford Plastics, the plant was located in a town near Beatty, about 45,000 people. They manufactured a variety of products, from lawn ornaments, patio furniture to automobiles. They employed about 3,000 workers. The company played an important part in the economy and the entire state, offering few well paying factory jobs.

Investigations into developing a more sustainable and eco-friendly aspect of every day life are becoming a major priority. Without such investigations or developments in not only the food packaging sectors, but in many other major industries, this planet along with its inhabitants will surely succumb to the human lust of consumerism and ultimately the waste that such hunger produces. The implantation of ecofriendly “green” packaging options would see a sharp decline in the amount of waste that is produced each year and give the ability to recycle and to produce new items from previously used packaging. In this report the team discuss the concept of biodegradable plastics and their future implementation as “green” food packaging alternatives to the current form of non eco-friendly plastics that are in existing use. Biodegradability refers to a composites ability to be degraded by bacteria or other living organisms, plastics such as these can also be susceptible to water and ultraviolet rays as sources of decomposition with this aspect being discussed within the chapters of this report. As apart of this report, team members assess the discovery, life cycle as well as the current or future applications of three different types of bio-plastic. Contained within is discussion on Poly-Lactic Acid, Novamont’s thermoplastic starch-based polymer and …

Even when the demand for an operations products can be reasonably well forecast, the inherent uncertainty in all estimates of future demand may inhibit the business from investing capital to meet the most likely level of demand. Contrastingly, this principle can be linked to the concept of economies of scale. For BCF the addition of one unit of capacity i.e. from the extra capacity provided by the conventional technology option, the total fixed costs per unit of potential production output will decrease. For the new technology option, the addition of one unit of capacity will increase unit costs – a diseconomy of scale. Initially, this claim is based on the capital cost of implementing the new technology option, as well as diseconomies of over using capacity having the effect of increasing unit costs above a certain level of output. As a result, more operations activities