Chemical Management or May the Best Team Win

Chemical Management: Reducing Waste and Cost Through Innovative Supply Strategies

Author: Thomas J Bierma

The only step-by-step guide to an exciting new chemical management and waste minimization methodology

Over the past decade, a revolutionary new approach to chemical supply has emerged that dramatically reduces chemical waste and chemical costs while improving company performance. Known as Shared Savings Chemical Management, it has already yielded astonishing results for several major North American manufacturing firms and numerous other companies. The first complete guide to this innovative chemical management methodology, Chemical Management acquaints you with Shared Savings principles and shows you how to put them to work in your company.

Thomas Bierma and Francis Waterstraat Jr. explore the environmental, health and safety, purchasing, inventory, tracking, waste disposal, and other major problems inherent to traditional chemical supply programs, and clearly explain how and why a Shared Savings Chemical Management program helps minimize or completely eliminate those problems. With the help of fascinating case studies, they demonstrate how Shared Savings techniques are currently being applied in five extremely successful plants belonging to GM, Ford, Chrysler, and Navistar International. What's more, they provide you with a complete, step-by-step blueprint for designing and implementing a Shared Savings program tailored to your company.

Chemical Management is an indispensable resource for manufacturing managers, purchasing managers, environmental managers, health and safety managers, and others charged with developing more effective chemical waste minimization strategies for their companies.

Chemistry and Industry

This is a genuinely exciting book.

Table of Contents:

It's Time to Change Your Chemical Management Strategy.
THE CHEMICAL BEAST.
The Chemical Beast: The Hidden Cost of Chemicals.
Causes of the Chemical Beast.
Inherently Wasteful Relationships.
Total Cost of Chemical Ownership.
Chemicals Affect Product Costs.
Chemicals and Business Value.
SHARED SAVINGS CHEMICAL MANAGEMENT.
Alternative Chemical Supply Strategies.
Elements of Shared Savings Chemical Management.
Why Shared Savings Works.
Purchasing and Chemical Management.
EHS and Chemical Management.
Concerns and Misconceptions about Shared Savings.
SHARED SAVINGS IN ACTION.
Chemical Management Case Histories.
Navistar Engine Plant.
General Motors Truck and Bus Plant.
Ford Chicago Assembly Plant.
Chrysler Belvidere Assembly Plant.
General Motors Electro-Motive Division.
PUTTING SHARED SAVINGS TO WORK.
Benefits for the Chemical User.
Benefits for the Chemical Supplier.
Implementing Shared Savings.
Shared Savings Contracts.
Pricing.
The Future of Shared Savings.
Glossary.
Bibliography.
Index.

Book review: Italy Al Dente or Ice Carving Made Easy

May the Best Team Win: Baseball Economics and Public Policy

Author: Andrew S Zimbalist

"Since 1922 MLB has benefited from a presumed exemption from the nation's antitrust laws. It is the only top-level professional baseball league in the country, and each of its teams is assigned an exclusive territory. Monopolies have market power, which they use to derive higher returns, misallocate resources, and take advantage of consumers. Major league baseball is no exception." "In May the Best Team Win, Andrew Zimbalist provides a critical analysis of the baseball industry, focusing on the abuses and inefficiencies that have plagued the game since the 1990s, when franchise owners appointed their colleague Bud Selig as MLB's "independent" commissioner." Run by a shrinking and self-selecting group of owners subject to no oversight, MLB suffers from a lack of competitive pressure. Several large franchises are owned by media companies that have shackled their teams to lucrative broadcast and cable contracts - often making it impossible for fans to see games on television. Others own entities that do business with the teams, charging inflated prices for facility management, concessions, and catering. Complex intracompany transactions can reduce franchise revenues substantially, causing operating losses for teams while the owners still make millions.

The New York Times

Zimbalist offers a medley of free-market remedies designed to enhance competitive equity. — Lawrence S. Ritter

The Washington Post

In his dense but readable book May the Best Team Win: Baseball Economics and Public Policy, economics professor Andrew Zimbalist concerns himself with fixing a different problem in baseball: the competitive advantages of wealthier, big-market teams. He argues that eliminating Major League Baseball's antitrust exemption would eradicate many of the game's problems. If MLB were modeled after European soccer leagues, which often have several teams in a city, the financial advantages held by big-market teams such as the Yankees could be blunted. — Sean Callahan

Publishers Weekly

Zimbalist, professor of economics at Smith College, is arguably the leading authority on sports economics in the country. His Baseball and Billions (1992) was one of the first books to take an educated look at the business of baseball, and since the release of that book, Zimbalist has spent thousands of hours researching and writing about the industry. His conclusion in his latest work, that baseball is in trouble, is not a new idea, but the reasons behind baseball's problems and Zimbalist's solutions combine to create an absorbing, provocative discussion. Zimbalist is no friend of baseball owners or baseball commissioner Bud Selig, and he devotes much space to tearing down arguments about the poor financial health of most teams and the need for cities to subsidize teams by paying for new stadiums. Expansion, not contraction, for example, would help spread out talent. The root cause of baseball's problems, Zimbalist argues, is its monopoly, and his most radical idea is for Congress to lift baseball's antitrust exemption and to force divestiture into two competitive leagues. But failing that, Zimbalist has a number of suggestions to improve the status of the game, including attracting younger fans by starting some World Series games at an earlier time; lowering ticket prices; and creating an owner/player partnership to study baseball's problems. At the very least, this volume provides baseball fans with enough material to allow them to engage in one of their favorite pursuits-arguing over what should be done to save the national pastime. (Apr.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Fans who take the health of their game very seriously will profit from reading this original if somewhat wonkish study of major league baseball and its structural economic ills. Zimbalist (economics, Smith Coll.; Baseball and Billions: A Probing Look Inside the Big Business of Our National Pastime) argues that baseball is not always the boon to local economies that it is advertised to be. Major league baseball has put a stranglehold on real competitive balance, and Zimbalist claims that the near-monopoly status is a detriment to any impulse for improvement. His prescriptions offer harsh but needed medicine.