...Industry Life Cycle Evidence on entry, exit, firm survival, innovation and firm structure in new industries is reviewed to assess whether industries proceed through regular cycles as they age. A leading depiction of the evolution of new industries, the product life cycle, is used to organize the evidence it is shown that the product life cycle captures the way many industries evolve through their formative eras, but regular patterns occur when industries are mature that are not predicted by the product life cycle. Regularities in entry, exit, firm survival and firm structure are also developed for industries whose evolution departs significantly from the product life cycle. Definition of 'Industry Lifecycle' A concept relating to the different stages an industry will go through, from the first product entry to its eventual decline. There are typically five stages in the industry lifecycle. They are defined as: i. Early Stages Phase - alternative product design and positioning, establishing the range and boundaries of the industry itself. Ii.Inovation Phase - Product innovation declines, process innovation begins and a "dominant design" will arrive. iii. Cost or Shakeout Phase - Companies settle on the "dominant design"; economies of scale are achieved, forcing smaller players to be acquired or exit altogether. Barriers to entry become very high, as large-scale consolidation occurs. iv. Maturity - Growth is no longer the main focus, market share and cash flow become...
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...Jorge Porres August 18, 2013 Investments Keiser University Week 3 Essays 1. Industry Life Cycle: Discuss the industry life cycle, how this concept can be used by security analysts, and the limitations of this concept for security analysis. The industry life cycle is made up of five stages: 1. Pioneer phase: This face is characterized by the high cost of production and the low demand of the product by the market. Mostly made up of start-ups. 2. Growth phase: When sales start to grow thanks to little competition. 3. Mature Growth phase: Companies begin to be affected by competition and as a result profit margins begin to diminish. 4. Stabilization /Maturity phase: this is typically the longest phase an industry will go thru, it is still affected by competition and starts growing by an average of the now fully created industry. 5. Deceleration / Decline phase: the falls in demand do to innovation in other products from other companies or industries. This life cycle can be effective to security analysis or to investors because they know when it is wise to invest, knowing that a company will grow, so will its market cap. It is not always 100% effective do that it is difficult to know when innovation will strike and one may not be prepared for the deceleration or decline phase. 2. P/E Ratio: The price/earnings ratio, or multiplier approach, may be used for stock valuation. Explain this process and describe how the "multiplier" varies from the one available...
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...3 Case study on Plastics : PET Bottle Life Cycle of Plastics Crude Oil Polymer Product Use Waste Recovery Polymer Product Use Overview of PET bottle recycling Containers and Packaging Recycling Law Specified business entities Fiber Industry (wash, crash, melt, spin) Bottle Industry Obligation to recycle Local governments (deporimerization) Consumers Selective collection and storage Selective discarding Players Producers n n n n Plant designers Product designers Energy suppliers Related industrial sectors Consumers Municipal and governmental authorities Waste treatment agencies Role of KIH ‘configuration engine’ To inform players of their role in life cycle as a stakeholder To accumulate knowledge/information of life cycle from information suppliers To interpret massive life cycle data with transparency for rational decision making 1. 2. 3. Overview of PET bottle recycling Containers and Packaging Recycling Law Specified business entities Fiber Industry (wash, crash, melt, spin) Bottle Industry Obligation to recycle Local governments (deporimerization) Consumers Selective collection and storage Selective discarding Objective of this case study To develop a ‘configuration engine’, which takes LCA as an environmental metric concurrently with an economic metric, for chemical process designer, To clarify steps, tools and information in a form of business-model. To show actual design...
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...Life Cycle Assessment study of starch products for the European starch industry association (AAF): sector study Vercalsteren An, Dils Evelien, Boonen Katrien Study accomplished under the authority of the European starch industry association (AAF) 2011/TEM/R/104 August 2012 All rights, amongst which the copyright, on the materials described in this document rest with the Flemish Institute for Technological Research NV (“VITO”), Boeretang 200, BE-2400 Mol, Register of Legal Entities VAT BE 0244.195.916. Table of Contents TABLE OF CONTENTS Table of Contents ________________________________________________________________ 3 List of Figures ___________________________________________________________________ 4 List of Tables ____________________________________________________________________ 5 CHAPTER 1 CHAPTER 2 2.1. 2.2. 2.3. Introduction ________________________________________________________ 7 Definition of goal and scope ___________________________________________ 9 9 9 10 Introduction Goal definition Scope definition CHAPTER 3 CHAPTER 4 4.1. Life cycle data inventory _____________________________________________ 15 life cycle impact assessment __________________________________________ 19 19 LCIA methodology 4.2. Environmental profiles of starch products 20 4.2.1. Environmental profile of native starches _________________________________ 20 4.2.2. Environmental profile of liquid glucose (including Glucose and Fructose syrups) __ 20 4.3. Carbon...
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...Individual Assignment 2: LCA of two products Life Cycle Assessment of Nissan Cars *ASR: Automobile Shredder Residue. ASR is what remains after material recycling is done to recover as much ferrous and non-ferrous metallic material as possible from the automobile shredder residue. Nissan conducted LCAs since the early 1990s, and made quantitative comparisons to understand the environmental impact of materials that were changed in the following parts. * Radiators * Air conditioners * Front-end modules * Back doors Based on the results of the LCA Project carried out by the LCA Committee of the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association from October 1997 to March 2001, Nissan reviewed in-house LCA methods and calculated results for major models. * May 2005: Inventory analysis was certified as being in accordance with the LCA method stipulated in JIS Q14040 by the Japan Environmental Management Association for Industry. Models that have undergone LCA: Skyline (made in Japan), Dualis (made in England) To develop more environmentally-friendly vehicles, LCAs are also conducted for new technologies that are introduced. These results are used to achieve the goals set out in the Nissan Green Program 2010* and the Nissan QCT-C* management policy, which clarify our environmental efforts. * *Nissan Green Program 2010: An environmental program that establishes activity plans and specific numerical targets for Nissan to...
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...vitamins A, B & D. The history of milk began in the Neolithic age (the new stone age), a time when humans started the transition from hunting and gathering to a more settled way of life. Life Cycle of Milk Supply Chain: Environmental and societal impact of Milk; The dairy industry poses a number of challenges to the health of the environment- * Methane emission- this is release from cows’ during the digestion process either by belching or flatulence. Statistics vary on how much methane an average dairy cow expels on a daily basis. Some experts say 100 liters to 200 liters, while others say it's up to 500 liters a day. This amount of methane is comparable to pollution expelled by a vehicle * Carbon emission- according to studies carried out by the U.S dairy carbon footprint study, it showed that carbon footprint of a gallon of milk is approximately 17.6 pounds of carbon dioxide equivalents. This will usually occur during milk freight and distribution. * Water pollution-Disposal of organic wastes without treatment leads to pollution of water resources hence, causing a rapid growth of microscopic algae that kill fishes and other aquatic life. Furthermore, ammonia released from manure can lease to acid rain causing environmental harm. * Land conversion - The dairy industry is also responsible for majority of land conversion, particularly in the tropics, to grow the feed...
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...Abstract The AMD Fusion Family of Accelerated Processing Units (APUs), introduced to market in January 2011, is a new generation of processors that combines the computing processing unit (CPU) and graphics processing unit (GPU) capabilities in a single chip (die). APU-based platforms can deliver a prodigious amount of computational horsepower, and can present enormous opportunities in developing an application ecosystem beyond today’s mainstream computer systems. While APUs seek to deliver a superior, immersive PC experience, they also can provide tangible environmental benefits. By eliminating a chip to chip link and by introducing new holistic power management techniques, the APUs are designed to be more power efficient than current generation platforms that have both computational and graphical capabilities. This paper compares the environmental impact of one of AMD’s first APU products against an equivalent computer platform powered by the current generation of AMD processors (CPUs and GPUs). By conducting a business to consumer (B2C) lifecycle assessment, this study compares the total lifecycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (also known as a “carbon footprint”) of an APU system (based on the 18W dual-core processor codenamed “Zacate” and the M1 chipset codenamed “Hudson”) with the latest AMD system codenamed “Nile” (which is based on an AMD Athlon™ Neo II Dual Core processor, SB820 Southbridge, RS880M Northbridge with an ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 5430 discrete graphics...
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...Life cycle assessment is internationally used to assess the potential environmental performance of a product from an initial concept to the end of the products life. LCA considers five main areas that include resources, manufacturing, distributions, use, and end of life. Since all products are in some way harmful to the environment, lifecycle analysis helps to determine which products are most harmful based on the resources, energy, and carbon consumed over a products life. Life cycle analysis takes into account the impacts on the environment at each stage of a product’s life cycle, and highlights the stages where it is the most largely affected, which means that more time can be spent designing solutions, rather than finishing the project...
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...The Life Cycle Assessment of Cell Phones The mobile phone has become an essential product all around the world. A small handheld device with the ability call, send messages, and access the internet from almost anywhere in the world has become a necessity for many citizens of developed countries. Due to rapid technological advances, cellular phones become obsolete in a very short period of time. The average lifespan of a cell phone is only 18months in the US (LCA of Cell Phones). With over 233 million active cell phones in use in the US alone and 4 billion worldwide, it’s mindboggling to consider how many phones that have been created and discarded over the past few decades. 1. What environmental impacts are the most significant? The energy usage costs accounts for over 30% of the total life cycle energy (LCA of Cell Phones). Depending on how the electricity is created (coal, natural gas, oil, etc.) lots of greenhouse gases and other pollutants are released into the air. 2. What lifestage(s) contribute the most to these impacts? Energy usage occurs in the Product Consumption stage. The daily recharging of the battery is a huge energy obligation. 3. What are the strengths, flaws, and limitations of the analysis? The analysis has a great amount of cell phone data within the US and gives great examples of LCA goals from companies like AT&T and Nokia. However there is almost no information about the LCA from the global perspective. Also there is no information...
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...DANTES Environmental costs and environmental impacts in a chemical industry eLCC and LCA on two colorants Stefan Bengtsson & Li Sjöborg Product Stewardship & Sustainability Akzo Nobel Surface Chemistry April 2004 Preface This report is the result of our master thesis work at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg. The project was performed at Akzo Nobel Surface Chemistry Sweden and at the department of Environmental System Analysis (ESA) at Chalmers. Sver ker Molander at ESA and Karin Sanne at Akzo Nobel have been the supervisors for this thesis work and we’d like to thank both of them for their support and their many good ideas. Additional thanks goes to the employees at Akzo Nobel Surface Chemistry Support Unit Sweden and to everyone we have been in contact with when collecting data to this thesis. Thank you! Göteborg, May 2004 Stefan Bengtsson Li Sjöborg Summary As the awareness of environmental problems increases so does the demands and guidelines from legislations and customers that deal with the environmental problems of the industries products and manufacturing processes. For a large international chemical company such as Akzo Nobel these increasing demands lead to costs for administrative work, taxes, testing, additional staff and investments. The aim of this study is to determine the properties of these “environmental costs” for the products of a chemical company. The study has focused on the production of two colorants. A surfactant (Berol 09)...
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...Germany; Phone: +49 821 7000-181; Fax: +49 821 7000-100; Email: ewuerdinger@bifa.de Table of Contents 1. INTRODUCTION 2. HISTORICAL OUTLINE 3. METHODOLOGY OF LCA 4. PRESENTATION OF COMPARATIVE DATA 4.1 STARCH POLYMERS 4.1.1 Starch polymer pellets 4.1.2 Starch polymer loose fills 4.1.3 Starch polymer films and bags 4.1.4 Starch nanoparticles as fillers in tyres 4.2 POLYHYDROXYALKANOATES (PHA) 4.3 POLYLACTIDES (PLA) 4.4 OTHER POLYMERS BASED ON RENEWABLE RESOURCES 4.5 NATURAL FIBRES 5. SUMMARISING COMPARISON 6. DISCUSSION 7. CONCLUSIONS 7.1 7.2 SUMMARY AND FURTHER ELABORATION OF FINDINGS OUTLOOK AND PERSPECTIVES 8. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 1 9. REFERENCES ANNEX 1: OVERVIEW OF ENVIRONMENTAL LIFE CYCLE COMPARISONS FOR BIODEGRADABLE POLYMERS INCLUDED IN THIS REVIEW ANNEX 2: CHECKLIST FOR THE PREPARATION OF AN LCA FOR BIODEGRADABLE PLASTICS a ABS CH4 cm CO2 CR pallet d ECCP EPS eq. g GF pallet GHG GJ ha HDPE kg l LCA LDPE LLDPE MJ m3 MSWI N2O PCL PE PET PHA PHB PLA PVOH PWB PO4 PP PS PVOH PE R&D SO2 TPS year acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene methane centimetre carbon dioxide pallet made of chinareed as reinforcement...
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...This paper presents a life cycle assessment of beeswax candles in the effort to confirm that beeswax candles are more sustainable and environmentally friendly than other comparable variations. Various types of candles are burned every year by millions of consumers; the United States Environmental Protection Agency reports that candle and incense sales exceeded a million dollars in 1999 (Knight, Levin, & Mendenhall, 2001). Beeswax candles, however, are one of the few sustainable and environmentally friendly types of candles available to consumers. Through the exploration of how the collection beeswax affects bees, the energy used and pollution created through candle production and transportation, and the effects burning candles and their disposal have on the environment, a thorough life cycle assessment will support the claim that beeswax candles are the most sustainable and environmentally friendly candle available on the market. To support the aforementioned claims, the environmental effects of other types of candles will be compared to those of beeswax candles. The collection of beeswax can be traced back millions of years and these traditional ways of beekeeping are still used today (Bradbear, 2009, p.1). Breadbear describes that beekeepers have found that the end of a flowering season is the best time of the year to harvest the honey (2009, p. 42). She explains more thoroughly, The honeycomb can be simply cut into pieces and sold as fresh, cut comb honey. Alternatively...
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...Costing Systems 2 Identifying the full range of sustainability impacts a vital stage in better decision making. A number of companies have begun the transition to improved social and environmental cost accounting using methodologies such as activity-based costing (ABC), life-cycle assessment (LCA), and full cost accounting (FCA) (Epstein, 2008). ABC assumes that activities related to products, services, and customers cause the costs. ABC first assigns costs to the activities performed by the organization (direct labor, employee training, regulatory compliance) and then attributes these costs to products, customers, and services based on a cause-and-effect relationship (Epstein, 2008) The main advantages of ABC include an assessment of costs of individual activities, based on their use of resources; accurate costing of activities to be obtained throughout an organization; ease of identification where high (and low) costs are being incurred (and the cause), and serving as a valuable tool for both business and process improvement. It also helps with future product planning; ie: the cost of all activities associated with a product or service can be accurately determined before it is launched. This can then help with determining pricing, and any associated expenditure. However there are disadvantages to ABC as well. It may be difficult to set up or establish, particularly if an organization is using more traditional accounting methodologies. It can be time consuming if...
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...fleet, three scenarios of introduction of 10–30% fuel cell vehicles including plug-in hybrids configurations were analysed. Considering the scenarios of increasing hydrogen based vehicles penetration, up to 10% life cycle energy consumption reduction can be obtained if hydrogen from centralized natural gas reforming is considered. Full life cycle CO2 emissions can also be reduced up to 20% in these scenarios, while local pollutants reach up to 85% reductions. For the purpose of estimating road vehicle technologies energy consumption and CO2 emissions in a full life cycle perspective, fuel cell, conventional full hybrids and hybrid plug-in technologies were considered with diesel, gasoline, hydrogen and biofuel blends. Energy consumption values were estimated in a real road driving cycle and with ADVISOR software. Materials cradle-to-grave life cycle was estimated using GREET database adapted to Europe electric mix. The main conclusions on CO2 full life cycle analysis is that lightduty vehicles using fuel cell propulsion technology are highly dependent on hydrogen production pathway. The worst scenario for the current Portuguese and European electric mix is hydrogen produced from on-site electrolysis (in the refuelling stations). In this case full life cycle CO2 is 270 g/km against 190 g/km for conventional Diesel vehicle, for a typical 150,000 km...
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...evolution of their sustainability principles and broad plans for implementation. In the 1980s the environmental concerns were primarily pollution control and prevention with a focus on reducing emissions from existing manufacturing processes. During this period the company made significant improvement in pollution control and prevention, risk management, and facility improvements such as reducing toxic materials and emissions. In the 1990s the focus shifted to product stewardship, which emphasizes earlier intervention to minimize environmental impacts associated with the full life cycle of a product. The product stewardship function focused on developing global processes for tracking and managing regulatory compliance issues, customer inquiry response systems, information management, public policy shaping, product take-back programs, green packaging, and integrating “design for the environment” and life cycle analysis into product development processes. Today the company realizes that pollution prevention and product stewardship have become baseline market expectations and that to be an environmental leader in this century, a company needs to integrate environmental sustainability into its fundamental business strategy. This company realizes that it must redefine its core business utilizing the principles of the 3 “E’s”: Environmental, Economic and Equitable (social) sustainability. The reasons...
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