Category Archives: Collaboration

Liner conferences and antitrust in Europe

Liner conferences involved ship owners who discussed sharing capacity, stabilized port fees, etc. They were legal in Europe until 2008. Ship owners claim that their role was benign, and only helped to stabilize prices by increasing efficiency. A recent investigation … Continue reading

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Price fixing of detergents by manufacturers seeking green solutions

A New York Times article (April 13, 2011) describes fines levied on Proctor & Gamble ($ 306 million) and Unilever ($ 104 million euros) for price-fixing to maintain market shares as they worked together in an industry association to implement … Continue reading

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Nissan’s Recovery from the Japan Earthquake

A Wall Street Journal article (April 8,2011) describes how Nissan rallied after the Japan earthquake to restore its supply chain. Immediately after the quake, the disaster team took stock of the supply chain and, in one hour, got a read … Continue reading

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Japanese Tiers 2 and 3 supplier impact of the tsunami

A Wall Street Journal story (March 26, 2011) describes production shortages at Renesas Electronics, a divison of NEC, and a supplier of chips to intermediates like Hitachi , Bosch and Siemens, who in turn create auto components to control engines, … Continue reading

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Auto Supply Chain Parts Shortages and OEM Impacts

A Wall Street Journal article (March 22, 2011) describes parts shortages across the auto supply chain for chips, sensors, forged parts etc. In some cases, past auto demand order drops have resulted in supplier capacity being diverted (for chips) from … Continue reading

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Japan Tsunami and Supply Chain Resilience

A New York Times article (March 19, 2011) descibes management of the global supply chain impact of the Japanese tsunami and earthquake and likens it to triage in a hospital.  Apple is quoted as having buffer inventory to compensate for … Continue reading

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Electronic Component Suppliers for the iPad but OEMs too

A Wall Street journal article (March 4, 2011) describes an interesting global supply chain issue for electronic component suppliers like Toshiba, Samsung and LG Display (they supply memory chips or screens). These companies supply components used by Apple for their … Continue reading

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Why is the iPad the cheapest of the comparable tablets ?

A Wall Street Journal article (March 2, 2011) reports on a note by an analyst, Toni Sacconaghi, at Bernstein Research, on why the Apple iPad is the cheapest of the tablet products offered.  The article claims reasons for this cost … Continue reading

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Overlapping programs and agencies in the US government and streamlining potential

A Wall Street Journal article (March 1, 2011) describes a new GAO (General Accounting office) report on overlapping  programs and their responsibilities across US govt agencies. The report lists 80 programs to help disadvantaged people with transport, 80 programs to … Continue reading

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Targeted Emissions cuts before general carbon focused cuts

The Economist (February 17,2011) suggests that piecemeal focused emissions reductions of specific gases may generate fast results while building a more general consensus. For example,the article cites HFC-134a as a gas 1,000 times more warming than carbon dioxide. Similarly, carbon … Continue reading

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