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The notion that firms may achieve competitive advantage from an efficient, internal information system - in lieu of the high levels of vertical and horizontal coordination typically garnered solely from a large size operation - provides both an encouragement. For the relative success of mid-sized firms and a developmental template for similar enterprises in rural areas.

Surviving in a Low-price Cycle

Many plants now employ IT solutions to take a more proactive stance on their maintenance program. A predictive maintenance program is based on a plant's history of operating requirements and is derived from a statistically-based estimate of life span (or failure rate) and priority ranking (importance to operations) for each piece of equipment and machinery in the plant. The software dictates the priority of all maintenance work, schedules any required materials/equipment for just-in-time delivery, and documents the entire process.

Further improvements in technology may play an important role in increasing efficiency of ethanol plants. New "up front" technologies that fractionate the grain into starch, pericarp, germ and protein may enable ethanol plants to produce a wider set of byproducts and to increase the market value of the byproducts. This change is expected to increase the energy efficiency of the ethanol plant and reduce other processing costs per gallon of ethanol.

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* Contributed by: -
Pankaj Kumar,
Batch of 2006-2008,
National Institute of Industrial Engineering, Mumbai.