This was a big day for Th’ Gaussling. The new business unit I have been developing sent it’s first in-house chemical product out the door. Okay, it was a modest 25 grams of specialty product. But for the first time the cash has started to flow the other direction. We are reworking our catalog operation for faster and better service while taking advantage of bulk production by another division for better economy. Watch out, Aldrich! \;-)
Doing chemical synthesis is easy compared to inventing a custom business architecture; especially one that has to be compatible with other systems, yet bringing improvements forward. It is like doing a reaction that requires 12 molecules (dodeca-molecular?) to collide simultaneously- We call it “getting buy-in”. To start a new business unit in a company, you have to get buy-in from accounting, IT, analytical services, quality control, upper management, shipping and receiving, production, R&D, etc. Lots of skeptical folks need to be assured that you’re not going to complicate their lives, threaten their careers, or create accounting hazards.
Business architecture amounts to the work flow mechanisms necessary for order fulfillment. If an order comes in, how do you go about filling it and getting product to the customer while ensuring profitability, regulatory compliance, safety, and a comprehensive web of accounting relationships? Every product has to be a discrete entity that has branched audit trails- costing, analytical, raw material lot #’s, and business intelligence. Every product must have an up to date MSDS, specifications, certificate of analysis, and a manufacturing procedure that does not require a PhD to make it. Well, that last one is a more nebulous goal.
I now have a more visceral appreciation for all the work that has gone on behind the scenes at the major chemical catalog companies. A lot of work goes into every single product entry. Every product has a trail of raw material specs, finished goods specs, and specific analytical test methods. Record keeping must be up to the task. It takes a lot of different skill sets besides savvy with chemicals to operate a chemical company.
Lamentations on Chemistry 
Good for you! May you succeed so well that you one day own the people who bother you.
Business and science are a very interesting combination. Can you give the name of your business unit?
Hi Rich, I might disclose it at some later time. What is important for the blogsphere is to have mid-career characters like myself talk about what life is like in the business world. To me, the process is often more interesting than the result. Business is as much about anthropology as it is about math- a point that MBA students don’t always get. I can contribute by discussing what I know, which is chemistry and the pragmatics of the chemical business.
Congratulations!
I feel excited just hearing about it.
25 g. Hmm. I visited a facility in St. Louis that makes radiolabeled organic molecules for neuroscience research (predominantly). The owner personally made the label for every bottle that went out. I doubt that it was ever 25g. I don’t know.
Then there was the polyethylene catalyst guy – he always asked if the person had ever made a pound of polyethylene. Which probably is the line between academic and industrial interest.
It seemed like fun – nice to learn a little bit more about the hurdles to that point.
I just don’t see why anyone would take perfectly good ethylene and make resin from it. These catalyst people are scurvy dogs. \;-)