ECONOMIES of SCALE the Single Market Review Series
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Economics of Competition in the U.S. Livestock Industry Clement E. Ward
Economics of Competition in the U.S. Livestock Industry Clement E. Ward, Professor Emeritus Department of Agricultural Economics Oklahoma State University January 2010 Paper Background and Objectives Questions of market structure changes, their causes, and impacts for pricing and competition have been focus areas for the author over his entire 35-year career (1974-2009). Pricing and competition are highly emotional issues to many and focusing on factual, objective economic analyses is critical. This paper is the author’s contribution to that effort. The objectives of this paper are to: (1) put meatpacking competition issues in historical perspective, (2) highlight market structure changes in meatpacking, (3) note some key lawsuits and court rulings that contribute to the historical perspective and regulatory environment, and (4) summarize the body of research related to concentration and competition issues. These were the same objectives I stated in a presentation made at a conference in December 2009, The Economics of Structural Change and Competition in the Food System, sponsored by the Farm Foundation and other professional agricultural economics organizations. The basis for my conference presentation and this paper is an article I published, “A Review of Causes for and Consequences of Economic Concentration in the U.S. Meatpacking Industry,” in an online journal, Current Agriculture, Food & Resource Issues in 2002, http://caes.usask.ca/cafri/search/archive/2002-ward3-1.pdf. This paper is an updated, modified version of the review article though the author cannot claim it is an exhaustive, comprehensive review of the relevant literature. Issue Background Nearly 20 years ago, the author ran across a statement which provides a perspective for the issues of concentration, consolidation, pricing, and competition in meatpacking. -
A Review of Assembly Line Changes for Lean Manufacturing
IOSR Journal of Mechanical and Civil Engineering (IOSR-JMCE) ISSN: 2278-1684, PP: 01-05 www.iosrjournals.org A Review of Assembly Line Changes for Lean Manufacturing Awasare Anant Dattatray 1, M.V.Kavade 2 1 (Mechanical Engineering Department, Rajarambapu institute of Technology India) 2(Head Mechanical Engineering Department, Rajarambapu institute of Technology, India) ABSTRACT: The orientation towards an efficient mass customization confronts most companies with two opposing requirements: While the applied mass production system should be able to produce a huge product variety, the cost must be kept low. Therefore assembly lines have to be planned in a much more flexible way. The more complex the product, the more extensive the product mix—the more difficult the task. Shorter product life cycles also complicate the situation. Due to the volatile nature of market, companies cannot afford to manufacture same type of product for long period of time and neither can maintain high inventory level; to tackle this problem we propose a Continuous improvement tools and techniques are introduced to address these issues, allowing the manufacturing of superior quality products with efficient processes. The Lean tools and techniques is one of them. Keywords - production planning, Mixed-model assembly line balancing, Just-in-time scheduling, Lean tools, Product life cycle I. INTRODUCTION Assembly is an important manufacturing process for cost effective product variety. Significant research has been done in the Design and operations of assembly systems in support of high product variety, but many opportunities exist for future research. Assembly is the capstone process for product realization where component parts and subassemblies are integrated together to form the final products. -
The Industrial Revolution in America
DO NOT EDIT--Changes must be made through “File info” CorrectionKey=TX-A SECTION 1 The Industrial TEKS 5B, 5D, 7A, 11A, 12C, 12D, 13A, Revolution in 13B, 14A, 14B, 27A, 27D, 28B What You Will Learn… America Main Ideas 1. The invention of new machines in Great Britain If YOU were there... led to the beginning of the You live in a small Pennsylvania town in the 1780s. Your father is a Industrial Revolution. 2. The development of new blacksmith, but you earn money for the family, too. You raise sheep machines and processes and spin their wool into yarn. Your sisters knit the yarn into warm brought the Industrial Revolu- tion to the United States. wool gloves and mittens. You sell your products to merchants in the 3. Despite a slow start in manu- city. But now you hear that someone has invented machines that facturing, the United States made rapid improvements can spin thread and make cloth. during the War of 1812. Would you still be able to earn the same amount The Big Idea of money for your family? Why? The Industrial Revolution trans- formed the way goods were produced in the United States. BUILDING BACKOU GR ND In the early 1700s making goods depend- ed on the hard work of humans and animals. It had been that way for Key Terms and People hundreds of years. Then new technology brought a change so radical Industrial Revolution, p. 385 that it is called a revolution. It began in Great Britain and soon spread to textiles, p. -
Machine Tools and Mass Production in the Armaments Boom: Germany and the United States, 1929–441 by CRISTIANO ANDREA RISTUCCIA and ADAM TOOZE*
bs_bs_banner Economic History Review, 66, 4 (2013), pp. 953–974 Machine tools and mass production in the armaments boom: Germany and the United States, 1929–441 By CRISTIANO ANDREA RISTUCCIA and ADAM TOOZE* This article anatomizes the ‘productivity race’ between Nazi Germany and the US over the period from the Great Depression to the Second World War in the metal- working industry.We present novel data that allow us to account for both the quantity of installed machine tools and their technological type. Hitherto, comparison of productive technologies has been limited to case studies and well-worn narratives about US mass production and European-style flexible specialization. Our data show that the two countries in fact employed similar types of machines combined in different ratios. Furthermore, neither country was locked in a rigid technological paradigm. By 1945 Germany had converged on the US both in terms of capital- intensity and the specific technologies employed. Capital investment made a greater contribution to output growth in Germany, whereas US growth was capital-saving. Total factor productivity growth made a substantial contribution to the armaments boom in both countries. But it was US industry, spared the war’s most disruptive effects, that was in a position to take fullest advantage of the opportunities for wartime productivity growth. This adds a new element to familiar explanations for Germany’s rapid catch-up after 1945. earmament in the 1930s followed by the industrial effort for the Second RWorld War unleashed an unprecedented boom in worldwide metalworking production. Over the entire period from the early 1930s to the end of the Second World War, the combatants between them produced in excess of 600,000 military aircraft and many times that number of highly sophisticated aero- engines. -
Urban Concentration: the Role of Increasing Returns and Transport Costs
i'445o Urban Concentration: The Role of Increasing Retums and Transport Costs Public Disclosure Authorized Paul Krugman Very largeurban centersare a conspicuousfeature of many developingeconomies, yet the subject of the size distribution of cities (as opposed to such issuesas rural-urban migration) has been neglected by development economists. This article argues that some important insights into urban concentration, especially the tendency of some developing countris to have very large primate cdties, can be derived from recent approachesto economic geography.Three approachesare comparedrthe well-estab- Public Disclosure Authorized lished neoclassica urban systems theory, which emphasizes the tradeoff between agglomerationeconomies and diseconomies of city size; the new economic geogra- phy, which attempts to derive agglomeration effects from the interactions among market size, transportation costs, and increasingreturns at the firm level; and a nihilistic view that cities emerge owt of a randon processin which there are roughly constant returns to city size. The arttcle suggeststhat Washingtonconsensus policies of reducedgovernment intervention and trade opening may tend to reducethe size of primate cties or at least slow their relativegrowth. Over the past severalyears there has been a broad revivalof interestin issues Public Disclosure Authorized of regional and urban development. This revivalhas taken two main direc- dions. T'he first has focused on theoretical models of urbanization and uneven regional growth, many of them grounded in the approaches to imperfect competition and increasing returns originally developed in the "new trade" and anew growth" theories. The second, a new wave of empirical work, explores urban and regional growth patterns for clues to the nature of external economies, macro- economic adjustment, and other aspects of the aggregate economy. -
Analyzing Cost Efficient Production Behavior Under Economies of Scope: a Nonparametric Methodology
A Service of Leibniz-Informationszentrum econstor Wirtschaft Leibniz Information Centre Make Your Publications Visible. zbw for Economics Cherchye, Laurens; de Rock, Bram; Vermeulen, Frederic Working Paper Analyzing cost efficient production behavior under economies of scope: a nonparametric methodology IZA Discussion Papers, No. 2319 Provided in Cooperation with: IZA – Institute of Labor Economics Suggested Citation: Cherchye, Laurens; de Rock, Bram; Vermeulen, Frederic (2006) : Analyzing cost efficient production behavior under economies of scope: a nonparametric methodology, IZA Discussion Papers, No. 2319, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn This Version is available at: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/34010 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Terms of use: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Documents in EconStor may be saved and copied for your Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. personal and scholarly purposes. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle You are not to copy documents for public or commercial Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich purposes, to exhibit the documents publicly, to make them machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. publicly available on the internet, or to distribute or otherwise use the documents in public. Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, If the documents have been made available under an Open gelten -
Panel Assembly Line (PAL) for High Production Rates
2015-01-2492 Panel Assembly Line (PAL) for High Production Rates Michael Assadi, Sean Hollowell, Joseph Elsholz Electroimpact Inc. Samuel Dobbs, Brian Stewart Boeing Co. Copyright © 2015 SAE International Abstract Developing the most advanced wing panel assembly line for very The final solution was a coherent, streamlined and efficient assembly high production rates required an innovative and integrated solution, line capable of very high aircraft production rates (Figure 1). relying on the latest technologies in the industry. Looking back at over five decades of commercial aircraft assembly, a clear and singular vision of a fully integrated solution was defined for the new panel production line. The execution was to be focused on co-developing the automation, tooling, material handling and facilities while limiting the number of parties involved. Using the latest technologies in all these areas also required a development plan, which included pre-qualification at all stages of the system development. Planning this large scale project included goals not only for the final solution but for the development and implementation stages as well. The results: Design/build philosophy reduced project time and the number of teams involved. This allowed for easier communication and extended development time well into the project. All design teams (machine, tooling, automation, controls) Figure 1 PAL, automation cell, Line 4, Position 1 (L4P1) collocated and worked together on integration during all stages of development and implementation for the highest Introduction level of integration. Innovative integration of the tooling and the automated equipment evolved throughout project with the teams At the conception of the Panel Assembly Line (PAL), goals targeted working as one group. -
Suggested Answers Problem Set 3 Health Economics
Suggested Answers Problem Set 3 Health Economics Bill Evans Spring 2013 1. Please see the final page of the answer key for the graph. To determine the market clearing level of quantity, set inverse supply equal to inverse demand and solve for Q. 40 + 4Q = 400 - 8Q, so 360=12Q or Q=30. Initial equilibrium is point a below. Substitute this back into either inverse demand or supply and solve for P, P=40+4Q = 40+4(30) = 160. CS = 0.5(400-160)(30) = 3600. PS = 0.5(160-40)(30) = 1800. 2. Given the externality, the MSC= 52+4Q. The socially optimal output is where MSC=Inverse demand, 52+4Q = 400 - 8Q and therefore Q=29. Market clearing price should be P=400 - 8Q = 400 - 8(29) = 168 (point b). Because of the externality, market production is greater than socially optimal. The social cost of producing Q=30 is MSC = 52+4Q = 172. Since the externality is not internalized, consumers receive a benefit of dbae. The social cost is dbce. Therefore, deadweight loss is abc. This value is 0.5(1)(12) = 6. 3. The market equilibrium is determined by setting inverse supply equal to inverse demand and solving for Q: 8+2Q = 80 - Q, so 72=3Q so Q=24. Price would equal 8+2(24) = 56. The MSB=80-2Q so the socially optimal consumption would be at the point where inverse supply equals MSB, or 8+2Q = 80-2Q so 72=4Q or Q=18. Suppliers would supply this amount at a price of 8+2Q = 8+2(18) = 44. -
HANDLING and ASSEMBLY Technologysubject to Change Without Notice
INDUSTRY GUIDE HANDLING AND ASSEMBLY TECHNOLOGY EFFICIENT APPLICATIONS SOLUTIONS HANDLING AND ASSEMBLY TECHNOLOGYSubject to change without notice TABLE OF CONTENTS 2 HANDLING AND ASSEMBLY TECHNOLOGY | SICK 8019952/2016-05-13 Subject to change without notice TABLE OF CONTENTS Challenges Challenges in handling and assembly technology 4 Applications in focus The application graphics shown are not binding, they are no substitute for the need to seek expert technical advice. Small part assembly: Example of pre-assembly involving an optics module 6 Small part assembly: Example of pre-assembly involving a housing assembly 14 Small part assembly: Example of final assembly involving a sensor 28 Products Product overview 42 Special pages We simply detect any object 118 IO-Link 120 Software Tool Sopas 122 Smart Sensor Solutions 124 4Dpro 126 Expertise in machines safety 128 Safe control solutions 130 Safety controller Flexi Soft 132 Safe networking: Flexi Line 134 Safe sensor cascade: Flexi Loop 135 Safe motion monitoring 136 Encoder and Motor feedback systems 138 General information Company 140 Industries 142 SICK LifeTime Services 144 Versatile product range for industrial automation 146 Industrial communication and device integration 150 Services 155 8019952/2016-05-13 HANDLING AND ASSEMBLY TECHNOLOGY | SICK 3 Subject to change without notice HANDLING AND ASSEMBLY TECHNOLOGYSubject to change without notice CHALLENGES Challenges in handling and assembly technology Many industries such as automotive, electronics, metal, machine tools, and medical engineering can be identified as the driving force behind handling and assembly technology. They rely heavily on automated han- dling and assembly processes that in turn contribute to streamlining high quality and accuracy and improving productivity and PSDI times. -
High Volume Automated Spar Assembly Line (SAL) 2017-01-2073 Published 09/19/2017
High Volume Automated Spar Assembly Line (SAL) 2017-01-2073 Published 09/19/2017 Rick Calawa Electroimpact Inc. Gavin Smith Boeing Co CITATION: Calawa, R. and Smith, G., "High Volume Automated Spar Assembly Line (SAL)," SAE Technical Paper 2017-01-2073, 2017, doi:10.4271/2017-01-2073. Copyright © 2017 SAE International Abstract build process and an exercise of the lean principles. As is typical, relatively good data was available from the automated equipment, but The decision to replace a successful automated production system at analyzing it showed that machine run time was only a fraction of the the heart of a high volume aircraft factory does not come easily. A point overall build time. Numerous manual interactions required frequent is reached when upgrades and retrofits are insufficient to meet machine stops. All maintenance required production stops or late increasing capacity demands and additional floor space is simply night and weekend work. Build times varied widely. unavailable. The goals of this project were to increase production volume, reduce floor space usage, improve the build process, and The wish list for a new spar production system was ambitious: smooth factory flow without disrupting today’s manufacturing. Two decades of lessons learned were leveraged along with advancements in • No large production disruptions. the aircraft assembly industry, modern machine control technologies, and maturing safety standards to justify the risk and expense of a • Increase production capacity. ground-up redesign. This paper will describe how an automated wing ◦ Create a single flow line and reduce buffer requirements by spar fastening system that has performed well for 20 years is analyzed matching the takt time of the wing lines. -
An Overview of US Blueberry Production, Trade, and Consumption, with Special Reference to Florida1 Edward A
FE952 An Overview of US Blueberry Production, Trade, and Consumption, with Special Reference to Florida1 Edward A. Evans and Fredy H. Ballen2 Introduction the total production of blueberries was traded in the world market. Blueberry is cultivated commercially in about 27 countries worldwide, most of which are located in temperate zones. Between 2002 and 2011, world blueberry production grew at an annual rate of 5.45 percent, from 230,769 tonnes in 2002 to 356,533 tonnes in 2011. Blueberry production in 2011 was 13.66 percent higher than in the previous year, and 54.50 percent above the 2002 calendar year. The top five blueberry producers are the United States, Canada, Poland, Mexico, and Germany, respectively (FAOSTAT 2013a). The United States is by far the largest blueberry producer, with a production share of 56.07 percent between 2009 and 2011, followed by Canada (30.29%), Poland (2.92%), Germany (2.5%), and Mexico (0.94%). Between 2001 and 2010, global exports of blueberry more than doubled, from 53,232 tonnes in 2001 to over 113,000 tonnes in 2010 (FAOSTAT 2013b). During this same period, export value grew from $119.29 million in 2001 to $370.97 million in 2010. The top five exporters are the United States, Canada, Poland, the Netherlands, and Spain, respectively. The United States accounted for 50.94 Global blueberry imports grew from 49,224 tonnes in percent of the world exports from 2008 to 2010, followed by 2002 to over 113,000 tonnes in 2010. The United States is Canada (25.89%), Poland (6.78%), the Netherlands (5.44%), the largest importer, absorbing 63.30 percent of the global and Spain (1.74%). -
Resource Issues a Journal of the Canadian Agricultural Economics Society
Number 3/2002/p.1-28 www.CAFRI.org Agriculture, Food ß Current & Resource Issues A Journal of the Canadian Agricultural Economics Society A Review of Causes for and Consequences of Economic Concentration in the U.S. Meatpacking Industry Clement E. Ward Professor and Extension Economist, Oklahoma State University This paper was prepared for presentation at the conference The Economics of Concentration in the Agri-Food Sector, sponsored by the Canadian Agricultural Economics Society, Toronto, Ontario, April 27-28, 2001 The Issue This squall between the packers and the producers of this country ought to have blown over forty years ago, but we still have it on our hands .... Senator John B. Kendrick of Wyoming, 1919 lear and continuing changes in the structure of the U.S. meatpacking industry have Csignificantly increased economic concentration since the mid-1970s. Concentration levels are among the highest of any industry in the United States, and well above levels generally considered to elicit non-competitive behavior and result in adverse economic performance, thereby triggering antitrust investigations and subsequent regulatory actions. Many agricultural economists and others deem this development paradoxical. While several civil antitrust lawsuits have been filed against the largest meatpacking firms, there have been no major antitrust decisions against those firms and there have been no significant federal government antitrust cases brought against the largest meatpacking firms over the period coincident with the period of major structural changes. The structural changes in the U.S. meatpacking industry raise a number of questions. What is the nature of the changes and what economic factors caused them? What evidence is ß 1 Current Agriculture, Food & Resource Issues C.