A Value-Based Approach for Sustainable Supplier-Customer Relationships: The Case of the Indian Steel Industry

The steel industry, which has endured years of mediocre performance due to a supply glut and consequent depressed world prices, has seen considerable resurgence during the last several months. The ever-widening demand-supply gap, and greatly increased input costs have resulted in prices firming up. The sharp increase in steel prices without any let-up is an issue that steel customers have found difficult to grapple with. Many customers believe that the steel industry is behaving opportunistically. The paper attempts to understand the dynamics of the Indian steel industry. Although the steel industry caters to both consumer (B2C) and business (B2B) markets, the focus of the paper is on the business markets, which accounts for 80% of the market. After presenting a picture of who the suppliers and customers of the steel industry are, the paper presents the various forces at play in the industry, a conceptual model to understand supplier-customer relationships in the industry, and traces the sources of animosity and hostility between the supplier and the customer firms. Forging meaningful value-based long-term relationships between supplier and customer firms as a way forward is explored. The paper presents possible remedies to the malady of distrust between customer and supplier firms. Collaborative working between competing suppliers and active pan-industry collaborative forums to bring better cooperation and trust between customer and supplier firms are essential first steps to bring normalcy back into the industry’s functioning.

Two site self consistent method for front propagation in reaction-diffusion system

We study front propagation in the reaction diffusion process $A\leftrightarrow2A$ on one dimensional lattice with hard core interaction between the particles. We propose a two site self consistent method (TSSCM) to make analytic estimates for the front velocity and are in excellent agreement with the simulation results for all parameter regimes. We expect that the simplicity of the method will allow one to use this technique for estimating the front velocity in other reaction diffusion processes as well.Comment: 6 figure

Solar cycle induced variations in GONG p-mode frequencies and splittings

We have analysed the recently available GONG p-mode frequencies and splitting coefficients for a period of three and half years, including the rapidly rising phase of solar cycle 23. The analysis of mean frequency shift with different activity indices shows that the shift is equally correlated with both magnetic and radiative indices. During the onset of the new cycle 23, we notice that the change in $b_4$ splitting coefficient is more prominent than the change in $b_2$. We have estimated the solar rotation rate with varying depth and latitude. In the equatorial region, the rotation first increases with depth and then decreases, while an opposite behaviour is seen in the polar region. We also find a small but significant temporal variation in the rotation rate at high latitudes.Comment: Uses aastex, To appear in Astrophysical Journal, October 10, 2000 issu

Mechanism of enhanced light output in InGaN-based microlight emitting diodes

Micro-light emitting diode (LED) arrays with diameters of 4 to 20 mum have been fabricated and were found to be much more efficient light emitters compared to their broad-area counterparts, with up to five times enhancement in optical power densities. The possible mechanisms responsible for the improvement in performance were investigated. Strain relaxation in the microstructures as measured by Raman spectroscopy was not observed, arguing against theories of an increase in internal quantum efficiency due to a reduction of the piezoelectric field put forward by other groups. Optical microscope images show intense light emission at the periphery of the devices, as a result of light scattering off the etched sidewalls. This increases the extraction efficiency relative to broad area devices and boosts the forward optical output. In addition, spectra of the forward emitted light reveal the presence of resonant cavity modes [whispering gallery (WG) modes in particular] which appear to play a role in enhancing the optical output