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The industry and manufacturing are at the service of the business; that is their raison d’être. In the chapters that follow, we will lay the groundwork for evaluating the processes and the plants that implement them. At this point, we will limit ourselves to substantive questions:

1 – is the plant a good one? In other words, how does it compare to the competition in terms of efficiency, profitability, and management (safety, stability, branding, and compliance with regulations)? Do we have any idea of its durability? All of these issues fall within what is called benchmarking;

2 – is it in the country where we want it to be? Does it have the right capacity?

Obviously, the cost price of a product is the primary element of interest to the salesperson in charge of its sale. To this essential notion must be added the consistency of quality and reliability of production.

A strategic plan consisting of a number of potential actions will result from the confrontation between business and industrial analysis (see the bottom of Figure 1.3). These actions are:

1 – executive management: investments (internal growth), divestments, JV (joint ventures), divestment of activities, search for new activities, doing or making others do (subcontracting), partnerships, corporate purchases (external growth), etc.;

2 – marketing: search for new products, modification of old ones in terms of formulation (see, in Chapter 3, the case of aspirin, a century-old product that has been rejuvenated by adding additional functions, such as effervescence), innovation (innovation is sometimes making the old new again!);

3 – research: new synthesis processes, new products, new applications;

4 – manufacturing: improved operations, construction of new plants, closure of unprofitable plants.

The definition of core competencies is a difficult exercise that we will deal with through KM (knowledge management).

Development abroad, which has gained considerable importance through globalization, has its own unique characteristics, which we will see later.