Category Archives: Business

Th’ Gausslings 15th Epistle to the Bohemians. The career arc.

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My working life has been extremely stressful for as long as I can remember. A mirthess steampunk factory of angst and unworkable puzzles against a backdrop of uncollegial passive-aggression. But like most sciency mid-career people, I wear golden handcuffs that hold me back from making a clean break.  After years of manning the bilge pumps to keep the place working at maximum capacity, people get tired and inflexible. Minor infractions of protocol project to large images of disrespect and imagined malfeasances that burn into the internal viewing screen of our minds.

I write this blog in part as a means of passing along things I’ve gleaned over time from circumstances and people.  Today I have peers who are VP’s of research at some major corporations. Because of the sort of place I chose to align with, my progress will not keep up with these friends. This is the result of the deal I made with the devil years ago. That deal was the result of chosing a location over an organization. The folly of this is now only too apparent and must serve as an example to be passed along.

It is ever so important to be choosy about with whom you sign on and even more important, who you choose to spend your best years with. It is easily possible to commit to corporate beings who demand 110 %, but fail to reciprocate the dedication.  Power is in the ability to commit resources. In the business world all manner of things, brilliant or outrageous, are justified by the intonement of the words “business is business”. In the minds of many, this mantra justifies all.

I’m always amazed at how easy it is to don the corporate armor and strut around like a peacock.  I did a bit of it myself for a short period after I became a sales manager. But after a month reality threw a bucket of cold water on that fantasy when I realized that power is truly in the hands of people who sign the checks. It always has been. Sales people are a particular breed selected from the herd at large for their goal oriented drive and constant urge to prove themselves. 

The chemical business is conservative and socially constipated for the most part. It is nothing like the Silicon Valley paradigm where production is presented as a form of play time.  I’m sure it really isn’t, but it is a great recruitment meme. 

In business, there are wagon drivers and there are scouts. I’ve come to realize that I am a scout. I love riding into the brush looking for a path. Others are better adapted at coaxing the oxen to pull the wagons. 

Business isn’t quite the meritocracy that it is often projected to be. Business demands the adoption of certain kinds of behaviors around the alpha dogs.  People land in positions of leadership for all kinds of reasons and sometimes under the most unlikely circumstances.  Helpful attributes include singlemindedness, focus on the bare essentials of moneymaking, an engaging personality, and a knack for landing on your feet. Aggressive behavior and a bit of psychopathic ambition are helpful.

The fact of power is the act of power.  People early in their careers should strive to understand how power is accumulated and used. Even if you are disinclined to swing the stick around, it helps to understand it.

Mr. Thiel Speaks

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When you look for science news at news aggegation sites like Google News or popular publications like, well, any given magazine or newspaper, or (yawn) any given non-fiction television program, what you are likely to find are fluff pieces on topics related to medicine, automobiles, and telecommunications. To people in the news business, scientific progress means new kinds of medicines, better cars, and the latest (n+1)G cell phone or iPad.

It is possible for even successful people to apply pop-culture metrics to economic theory. For instance, the founder of PayPal, Peter Thiel, has written an essay for The National Review in which he questions the motives of scientists as well as their ability to maintain the growth of scientific progress.

The state of true science is the key to knowing whether something is truly rotten in the United States. But any such assessment encounters an immediate and almost insuperable challenge. Who can speak about the true health of the ever-expanding universe of human knowledge, given how complex, esoteric, and specialized the many scientific and technological fields have become? When any given field takes half a lifetime of study to master, who can compare and contrast and properly weight the rate of progress in nanotechnology and cryptography and superstring theory and 610 other disciplines? Indeed, how do we even know whether the so-called scientists are not just lawmakers and politicians in disguise (italics mine), as some conservatives suspect in fields as disparate as climate change, evolutionary biology, and embryonic-stem-cell research, and as I have come to suspect in almost all fields?

The article goes on to paint a picture of failure on the part of the scientific community for not coming up with a Moore’s law style of continuous bounty for the consumer.

Here is where I greatly disagree with Thiel. He cites the stagnation of wages as an indicator of economic progress which, in turn, is an indicator of tepid technological progress.

Let us now try to tackle this very thorny measurement problem from a very different angle. If meaningful scientific and technological progress occurs, then we reasonably would expect greater economic prosperity (though this may be offset by other factors). And also in reverse: If economic gains, as measured by certain key indicators, have been limited or nonexistent, then perhaps so has scientific and technological progress. Therefore, to the extent that economic growth is easier to quantify than scientific or technological progress, economic numbers will contain indirect but important clues to our larger investigation.

… Taken at face value, the economic numbers suggest that the notion of breathtaking and across-the-board progress is far from the mark. If one believes the economic data, then one must reject the optimism of the scientific establishment (italics mine).  Peter Thiel, National Review.

This is where Thiel drives into the weeds. He conflates stagnant wages in the post Viet Nam era with a failure of science and technology to produce the kinds of advances he would recognize as worthy.

What is lost on Thiel is the fact that stagnant wages are a kind of benefit to employers and investors as the result of technology. Over this so-called period of stagnation in wages is a complementary increase in productivity. If anything the improvements in technology unseen by Thiel and his ilk have been applied to render human labor obsolete, thereby sustaining profits. China hasn’t gotten all American jobs. Machines have taken over much ot it.

The fact that Thiel scans the horizon from his perch and fails to see this is indicative of a kind of blindness of prosperity. In his world, technology is the internet. Apparently, people like Thiel only register scientific progress as a stream of shiny new consumer electronics, supersonic transport, or brain transplants. The advances in science and technology from the last 20 years are everywhere, not necessarily just in internet technology, cell phones, and Viagra.

Semiconductor technology is now well below the micron scale and heading to the tens of nanometers.  Bits of data are heading toward tens to hundreds of electrons per bit.  Lithographic fabrication at this scale allows for rules of thumb like Moore’s Law.  Growth in component density can multiply parabolically or more as greater  acreage of chip surface is consumed in 3 dimensions. Many doublings are possible in this domain.

But parabolic growth in aircraft or land vehicle speed is limited by other physics. A dynamic range of only a few factors of ten in vehicle speed are economically feasible.  Fossil fuels are fantastically well suited for use in transportation owing to their high energy density, low cost per kiloJoule, and ability to flow through pipes. Fundamentally new forms of energy storage are hard to find and are expensive.  All energy usage is consumption.  Science can only go so far in facilitating better forms of consumption for the profligate.  Doing work against gravity also consumes lots of energy, so the world of George Jetson never became feasible.

Ordinary automobiles that comprise a part of the stagnancy that Thiel bemoans are coated in highly advanced polymer coatings made from specialty monomers, catalysts, and initiators. The polymeric mechanical assemblies are highly engineered as well as is the robotic assembly of the vehicle. The implementation of automation in the manufacture of plain old cars is just a part of the overall issue of low job growth. In this case, technological advancement => stagnant growth in wages and employment.

Imagine a Better Microsoft

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Imagine this. Imagine having a form of payment that requires the payee to change the manner in which they receive and deposit their payment. Imagine a system in which the currency in circulation is “upgraded” periodically and that within 8 or 10 years, the previous versions are no longer “supported” by the banking system.

Still with me? Let’s continue to imagine.

Now imagine paying Microsoft for their upgraded Office platform with a banking and currency system that changes as described above. Microsoft would have to direct their employees to change out their credit cards, requisition policies, travel policies, and accounting platforms to accomodate external demands just to remain in the game.

Over the last several months I have had to adapt to upgrades to Windows 7 and Office 2007. It is very much like moving the furniture around on a blind person. The features are still there, but access to the various tools and menues are arranged much differently.

So, Microsoft, I have spent considerable time relearning how to use software that I was proficient with in the previous rev. I am not enjoying new capability- only new learning curves. WTF!!!!

Your productivity tools are having a negative effect on my accumulated lifetime productivity.  This is worth something. Where do I send the bill?

US Chemical Business Innovation. Policy or Culture?

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The May 23rd, 2011, issue of C&EN, pp 30-31, printed an article titled “Innovation Policy Urged for U.S.”.  The article addresses more than a few considerations regarding the matter of innovation aspirations in the US. You can read the article for yourself. It details some silliness about government programs meant to stimulate startup’s. 

Startups are always in need of money. Like the salmon’s struggle to swim past the grizzlies to the upstream breeding waters, the struggle for resources is part of the Darwinistic screening process.  The struggle for operating funds is a way of screening out weak management. The trouble is, entrepreneurs are often awful managers so good products and services may die for the wrong reason.  Investor money is always loaded with conditions, as any startup operator knows.

The article quotes Richard Bendis, president and CEO of the consulting firm Innovation America. To quote Bendis, “Major research universities are the primary drivers of the future economy and job growth, mostly through science and technology. Global economic competitiveness requires the confluence of scientific discovery and the enabling resources of government and industry.” 

Well, Ok. It’s hard to take him to task here. But the last sentence is gobbledygook. What government cannot provide is the motivation or gumption on the part of chemists to start a company. Chemists need to be exposed to entrepreneuralism well before the day they set out to hatch a startup.  The current course of study in the bachelors program at virtually any US college or university is proctored by faculty who almost without exception come from a purely academic background. They know nothing about “industry” other than the salaries are probably better.

As Bendis rightly states, “Major research universities are the primary drivers of the future economy and job growth, mostly through science and technology.”  But major research universities, with a few exceptions, are poorly equipped to find and train chemists to be the future captains of of industry. It is a culture problem. The structure of the university chemistry department is not constructed to groom anything but scholarship. The American Chemical Society certification is part of the problem. The ACS recognizes and endorses a particular kind of curriculum. Most all chemistry departments have secured this endorsement long ago.  While the curriculum defines the minimum standards for a degree in chemistry, it also has the effect of freezing out much real innovation or adaptability in the field.

Faculty with business or industrial backgrounds are largely deselected from joining the club, if for no other reason than publication rates. Industrial chemists rarely have the opportunity to publish their work in the normal spread of journals owing to IP restrictions.  I’ve been a part of  a few search committees and I know how it can go.

The main exception to my generalization is MIT. Whatever it is that MIT is doing to stimulate startups, it’s does it very well. They are practically a force of nature by themselves. I would argue that the Mojo that MIT plainly possesses has more to do with culture than policy.

And it’s not just chemistry faculty that have to adapt to a new endgame in the program. The matter of turning a program to applied science must necessarily involve deans and university presidents.  They will all want to have their say. In the end, to most presidents, getting in the top 25 of whatever group of schools they aspire to be in is what matters. And that involves keeping the enrollment numbers and the endowment figures up. That is how they are measured and that is what they will look after.

Putting out applied science oriented majors will involve considerable cultural change in the academy. I’ve seen nothing to indicate that the academy is ready to embrace a real step towards the kind of entrepreneurial spirit in the aspirations expressed in the article in C&EN.  It is very difficult to be heard over the clucking in the academic henhouse.

Customer Service. The Fifth Ring of Hell.

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Things can go very wrong  for a customer service representative. Especially if I’m at the other end of the phone with the poor sod who picked up the phone. Case in point: I recently had the need to find an analytical testing company to have some material properties measured.  So, I go to my good friend, Mr. Google, for some listings. I find a few hits and begin to make some calls. 

My first contact was the customer service rep from a large international testing operation. I told the young lady what tests I wanted and she told me that before anything could happen, I’d need to send her the MSDS of the material in question. They had many labs all over the world and she would send the MSDS to the approriate lab. Wanting only to talk to a person about their basic capabilities and what is involved, I asked for a number. She declined. It was thursday and I went home. I had no intent of shipping them an MSDS. And evidently they had no intention of deviating from their procedure. Two of the components were edible and the third is commonly used by motorists.

Tuesday morning it was obvious that I needed to call again, so this time I was answered by a young fellow who promptly looked up my email address and stated flatly that they were waiting to receive the MSDS documents. There was a lot of back and forth and it ended with my pulling rank as an indignant customer with the tenor of one who was elder to the customer service rep. I was in angry professor mode.

Later that day I received a call from a sales rep. The salesman said he’d speak to a lab somewhere in TX.

Meanwhile, these  people were diddling around following their protocols and policies, so I found a company who would talk to me about the problem straight away. I received a quote, got approval, and ginned up a purchase request. Raw mats are on the way and the PO should go out today.  The first company I contacted hasn’t even responded yet. They think the ball is still in play.

So, what is the problem?  Having been through multiple consulting episodes with many sales and marketing consultants, I know what kinds of neat and tidy packages are offered by such people.  Business consultants sell plans and protocols. They sell the illusion of order and organization. They make managers feel like their sales organsization can be fashioned into a Teflon-slick, low overhead selling machine. Sometimes this is actually possible. Sales consultants will say that there are customers out there that you do not want to have. Customers who take a disproportionate fraction of your time are to be avoided. Lookers and tire kickers. Hagglers. They all require energy and time.

To optimize the customer contact side, they will devise chutes for the customers to glide into. You recognize this- the accursed automated phone answering systems that large organizations have is one such example. It is a sorting mechanism. A way to channel and rank prospects into a preorganized stream of tiered prospects. It has an important screening function which is separating the wheat from the chaff.

Where this company went wrong was their religious adherence to their protocol. They are prepared to lose customers who will not file up in their queue to shell out the preliminaries. I was brusquely transferred for someone else to deal with.  Sales is a numbers game. The more customer contacts you have the higher the sales numbers will be.  While their system appears to be efficient, they failed to grasp that some customers like myself would really prefer to have a few words with a person. A few minutes of back and forth with the lab guy who got my business assured me that they understood what I needed and could provide it. I rewarded him with a PO.  Customer service is is really customized service. Once the customer calls, your devotion should be to them, not just the protocol.

Sometimes it is dumb to be too smart.

Frito-Lay’s New PLA Rattle Bag

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As a veteran of the polylactic acid market invasion (PLA or polylactide) in the late 1990’s, I was heartened to see a new commodity application of PLA packaging appear on the shelves of the hometown grocer.  Well, alright. MArket invasion is overstating it a bit. We were one company among several in the race to grab PLA market share.  The founders of our company were engineers familiar with corn wet milling and the starch business. In the end, the skill set that carried the day was the combination of Cargill’s agribusiness presence and Dow’s massive polymer production business expertise. We were doomed. Our place as a Coors subsidiary with a modest cornstarch and wet mill operation just didn’t give us the gravitas to make the thing happen.

PLA is the polyester of lactic acid monomer, or perhaps more accurately, lactide monomer.  I’m generally in favor of PLA as a replacement polymer for polyolefin materials. PLA ultimately sources from starch fermentation in corn steep liquor.  Our process produced lactic acid using steepliquors as a nutrient source.

One of the reasons I left academics was the unusual chance to be part of a seemingly well funded startup aiming to commercialize a PLA process.  I’ve written about this before and won’t repeat it here. Our operation ultimately shut down within a year of my arrival due to some technology problems and a nervous group of investors- not an uncommon scenario.

My job was to come up with a comonomer for PLA to lower the glass transition temperature (Tg) and to bring down the crystallinity a bit. But first, some background.

One of the issues with PLA as a substitute commodity polymer was its relatively high Tg. PLA’s high Tg caused it to be unsuitable for contact with hot liquids owing to the fact that the polymer lose its rigidity and deform.  Food contact applications are a major commodity market for polymer producers, especially if the value proposition to the consumer is the biodegradability of the product.  Commonly disposable items like coffee and soft drink cups & lids, plastic utensils, straws, and diaper components are cited as ideal applications for green polymers. In order for PLA to be substituted into the disposables market, the matter of price and performance had to be resolved.

Our projections by 1998 were that PLA would be price comparable with nylon, then roughly $1.50 / lb.  Nylon was more expensive than polyolefins/polystyrene by quite a range, so the thinking was that at least initially, PLA would be specialty polymer product selling along the applications margins. PLA would have to grow, gaining acceptance by some kind of consumer.

But what is “some kind of consumer”?  It is easy to fall into the thinking that the crucial polymer consumers are the people buying the finished goods containing the polymer. But that isn’t exactly true. There is another key group of buyers than must be satisfied. And they are tough customers.

A crucial group of people who make buying decisions are actually found upstream of retail level consumers. They are the raw material buyers and they reside at several links on the value chain.

Let’s assume that the producer of a polymer -sold in pellet form- has produced a satisfactory product. It meets rigid specs for quality and performance.  The buyer of pelletized raw polymer is some kind of converter. A converter is a company that buys pelletized polymer and converts it to some variety of higher value product by the process of compounding and extrusion.  The compounder may produce films, filaments, or molded widgets. At this stage, polymer products are referred to as resins.

A compounder may be a producer of resin films or resin widgets who, in turn, supplies another manufacturer who uses the resin products for their own applications. Or, compounding may be integrated into the total manufacturing chain by one operator. A producer of things-that-contain-resin-widgets-or-films may have their own extrusion operation to contain cost.

What is critical to anyone scheming to bring a new polymer into the market is this: you have to sell the new resin to the compounder. If the new resin is more expensive, then the value proposition just got really difficult. A new (replacement) resin must have some kind of added value to the compounder and for the manufacturer downstream to  justify the disruption that its substitution is likely to cause.

What kind of disruption can polymer substitution cause?  All manufactured goods have specifications by which the manufacturer is able to distinguish acceptable from unacceptable quality. Specifications for components usually cite raw material specifications comprising physical or chemical properties, appearance, odor, or even specific commercial brands.  Swapping materials of construction or different compositions is a serious undertaking for a manufacturer of established goods. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

So, a resin substitution may require the persuasion of decision makers in a multicompany value chain to effect a substitution. This is the challenge before any producer of new resins. And PLA was in the same place as it was going to market in the late 1990’s. It takes a giant company with massive resources to effect the adoption of a new resin in the marketplace. Sales efforts have to be focused on the true decision makers. These are the manufacturers of packaging materials and the industrial buyers of resin components. They have to be convinced that any new resin won’t hurt existing sales and that there be some kind of premium for going to the trouble adopting change.

So, the new bag containing Frito-Lay Sunchips is on the market and it is made of PLA. Somewhere along the line a decision has been made to risk the change. I’ll say that the bags seem to have the same appearance as the previous variety.

The only problem is the rattle. The bags have rather a loud rattle due to the considerable crystallinity of PLA.  The way to make the rattle go away is to coploymerize it with a comonomer that increases the amorphous component of the polymer. PLA is made from enantiomerically enriched, biologically derived L-lactic acid. L-Lactic acid is used because it can be made cheaply by fermentation. The bugs only make one enantiomer.

The challenges of successfully incorporating a comonomer are many, and they are not all science related either. A comonomer must participate in ring-opening polymerization and combine with lactide. The relative reaction rates need to be in a range that allows for favorable incorporation without undue increases in reactor residence time. Comonomers can produce compositions varying from blocks of comonomer incorporation to random incorporation. It takes much time and abundant resources to work out the most desirable compositions and their respective economics.

We were using reactive extrusion where the residence time was related to screw speed and length of the extruder. Too much residence time at reaction temperature and the PLA would carmelize or darken. Residual acid is a killer. PLA is very sensitive to residual acid in the lactide. Very small amounts can be ruinous. It shut us down.

Incorporation of a comonomer that is not an agricultural or renewable product will taint the value proposition of “Green”.  Caprolactone is an example of a comonomer that had been explored by others, but [at the time of writing] I’m not aware that there is a Green route to that monomer. I recall that there were patent issues that prevented us from exploring caprolactone. However, there is a good chance that the patent issues have now expired. Nothing is forever, not even patents.

Follow this link for an earlier post on this topic.

The Passive Aggressive Opera. Act I. Reverse Delegation.

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Supervision of people is one of the things that a chemist can look forward to on the way up the ladder. The people who report to you may be called staff or report-to’s. The term “my employee” should be reserved for use by those who sign paychecks. What ever you call them, they’re your group.

I’m not going to write about how to manage people. After many years of doing it I’m not sure I really understand it yet. All I can say is that every day some people show up and expect you to keep them busy.

Okay, I’m just kidding. But I am serious about the mysteries of management of people. I think most would agree that the best way to lead people- the way most of us would prefer to be lead- is by setting a good example. It’s pulling instead of pushing. Inspired leadership by a charismatic and talented individual is preferable but, unfortunately, rather unusual. 

There are many theories of management and more management consultants than you can count out there urgently interested in telling you how to manage your staff.  All you have to do to sample the many management theories is to stroll through the business section of the local bokstore. Every one of the authors will trot out a set of polished anecdotes that outline the path to their own professional enlightenment.

Chemists on the  management track may move in many directions in a business organization. Most obvious is management of a technical activity like R&D. But there is also management opportunity in scale-up, pilot plant, production, QA/QC, and analytical services activity. Management of the production side is sure to include inventory and warehouse control, regulatory affairs, personnel issues, engineering, and maintenance. Itis not uncommon for engineers to head the production unit.

On the less technical side is sales, procurement management, and business development.  While perhaps less technical, the chemical industry needs (requires, really) chemically savvy people to handle purchasing and sales activity. It is not uncommon for sales oriented people to ascend into the upper reaches of management generally and the chemical industry is no different.

What is perhaps different in the chemical industry is that chemists are often disfavored in the track to the CEO’s office by their lack of economic training. The ability to deliver big projects on time and on budget is a key attribute and engineers are especially well positioned to do this very thing. The bigger the scale of operations the greater the likelihood that an engineer will be in charge. Or so my experience has been.

Among those I have observed, managers who have exemplary experience in controlling the big money are often the ones groomed for executive leadership. And the big money is in big projects with lots of sales volume. It is the source of life giving cash. That which makes the corporate world go ’round. The elusive spondulix.

But back to management. One of the most vexing aspects of managing people is that you have to manage people. People are complex and prone to nonlinear behavior. Everybody knows this. But the manager is tasked with using human resources to provide some kind of work product on time and on spec. How do you compel people to do this every day?

The threat of termination is a good though heavy handed tool to compel folks to do their job. But this is a tool that can also backfire. Frequent termination of people is stressful and puts the manager in the position of having to be in a more or less constant training mode. Best to hire hard working people who are self-starters.

I have not found a simple formula for management. All I can do is to support down and fight up. I fight for resources and reasonable expectations. I treat people in the most hospitable manner I can muster and in return I expect the same.

One of the most annoying behaviors is the phenomenon of “reverse delegation”. You ask your report-to to do a particular thing. In reply you are told that they can only do the thing if you first make some arrangements. You have to get this or that ready, or perhaps you have to write an SOP or work instruction, or maybe even they will need to fly to a hotel in Vegas or Orlando to take some training course. It is all push-back: a kind of passive aggressive behavior meant to deflect your attention.

What I have found is that these reverse delegators may be very concrete in their approach to the unfamiliar. They will assert that they must possess a good deal of skill to even begin some new task. Sometimes this is true. But often it is only a matter of time on task to make some good progress.  The hard part for some of us is dealing with the simple truth of the matter. Not everyone desires being collegial and operating on the give and take level of colleague. A lot of folks only respect the brusque barking of orders by a Captain Bly figure and the sight of a**holes and elbows hustling in the plant. I would have been Captain Kangaroo, not Bly. It’s just a fact.

Heads on a Stick

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As one of those poindexters who actually likes to watch Book TV on C-SPAN-2, I blundered into an interview of Naomi Prins. The host was Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT). Prins is presently a Senior Fellow at Demos and has had careers at Goldman Sachs and Bear Stearns.

Prins has a good deal of interesting insight into how securities are engineered from subprime loans and stamped with ratings. What stands out is how artificial securities are as an asset. It’s like putting a step ladder on a canoe. The view is good, but evenually you’re going to get wet.

Securities are synthesized from dung and straw, drenched in investment sauce, and then nestled in decorative tins by white gloved MBA castrati to afford a “product”. Naturally, banks and ratings agencies assure us that the rating on the security is meaningful. After all, who is more sober and conservative than a banker?

Perhaps investment banking as it is now practiced should be regarded as a pathological condition- a form of predatory, sociopathic behavior worthy of a psychiatric profile? Investment banking is a profession dedicated to the proposition that the mere repackaging and skimming of the wealth of others is the desired outcome. It is a bubble industry specializing in puffery and deception.

My libertarian friends assure me that the free market place is the most natural and efficient form of economic intercourse. Of course, the problem is that there isn’t a substantially free market anywhere. We have regulated markets because some people invariably game the system at the expense of others, resulting in a convulsive discharge of legislation.

One could take a Darwinistic view and say that the victims of investment shenanigans are to blame for being greedy and uninformed. There is truth in caveat emptor, but one of the reasons we have civilization is to buffer out the harshness of life. How do you protect the greedy and uninformed from the greedy and deceitful? It is the eternal problem.

The most despicable part of the 2008-9 financial collapse is the lack of accountability on the part of the skunks who invented and promulgated the unstable investment devices.  Their heads should be impaled on sticks and planted in the financial districts for all to see. Figuratively, I suppose.

Some Thoughts on Hazardous Goods

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When a customer orders a chemical from a chemical company, a series of events are triggered leading to the shipment. Every company has a unique business system for order fulfillment. Variable as the details may be though, certain aspects are shared by all companies.

There are special considerations for chemical goods that other manufactured items may not have. Chemicals must be packaged and shipped according to the nature of the material and to certain types of hazards that are present. The type of packaging is not just governed by good sense, but also by transport regulations.

Some substances are covered under regulations meant to control illicit drug manufacture or distribution. Diethyl ether, iodine, phosphorus, phenylmagnesium halide, phenylacetone, ephedrine, acetic anhydride, and many more seemingly ordinary chemical products are constantly under watch by authorities from behind the curtains.

Some substances may be used for explosives and munitions manufacture or use and prospective customers are screened accordingly. Other substances have been identified by the authorities as substances of interest. Phosphorus trichloride is one that comes to mind. Zirconium and titanium powders and components are subject to limitation also.

The kinds of regulatory constraints depend upon the compound of interest and whether or not it is an item for export or import. Import and export controls are in place for many reasons. The control of dangerous goods or illegal substances is an obvious goal. But the act of goods crossing the border is an opportunity for governments to temper the effects of international competition on behalf of homeland businesses through the imposition of duties.

International or domestic shipping of chemicals is rife with complications owing to the potential hazards of the cargo. Chemicals are classified according to their hazard and certain hazard classifications are barred from air transport or constrained to maximum package quantities. What is not transportable by air is usually fine for surface or ocean shipping, but these modes have their limitations as well. Fortunately, the regulations are internationally harmonized for the most part.

Woe is he whose container of hazardous goods is damaged or leaks at a foreign port of entry. Such an event may trigger remedies by the local authorities that will not only be very expensive, but will block the delivery of the material for a long time. This is why a smart manufacturer ships FOB -Free on Board. Once the order is on the truck and rolling off your mfg site, it is the responsibility of the customer thereafter.

For ocean shipments, the captain of the vessel has the final say as to what goes on the boat. Accordingly, your shipping container full of metal alkyls (Dangerous When Wet) will get loaded only at the pleasure of the skipper. It is not unheard of for the boat to sail without such cargos. More likely than not your container will get on the boat, but it will be placed at the top of a stack along side the railing. If there is a leak, over it goes.

A company that practices just-in-time inventory control with hazardous goods that come or go by boat must be prepared for delays and long transit times relative to air transport. It is always best to work with a logistics company that specializes in intermodal international shipments.