Examines how the chemical industry has been transformed over the past 20 years.

As business processes are crucial success factors for companies, software-based Business Process Management (BPM) is becoming more and more important. In this area SAP, the market leader for enterprise application software, has already gathered substantial experience. For the characterization, modeling and especially the optimization of business processes, SAP’s consultants use their own BPM approach. In addition to their considerable methodological know-how, the consultants’ profound knowledge of the industries facilitates the focus on core and business-critical processes. This book examines the current market situation, as well as the specific challenges and trends for the chemical and pharmaceutical industries. It also explains business process management basics and the specific SAP Consulting methodology, before illustrating the use of such methods and procedures with sample industry-specific core business processes. With the help of these examples from the chemical and pharmaceutical industries, SAP Consulting provides methodological guidelines on how Business Process Management can be used in practice to optimize business processes and make adjustments in response to constantly changing economic and environmental factors.

In this probing analysis of the European Union's transnational legal system, Lisa Conant explores the interaction between law and politics. In particular, she challenges the widely held view that the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has, through bold judicial activism, brought about profound policy and institutional changes within the EU's member states. She argues convincingly that this court, like its domestic counterparts, depends on the support of powerful organized interests to gain compliance with its rulings. What, Conant asks, are the policy implications of the ECJ's decisions? How are its rulings applied in practice? Drawing on the rich scholarship on the U.S. Supreme Court, Conant depicts the limits that the ECJ and other tribunals have to face. To illuminate these constraints, she traces the impact of ECJ decisions in four instances concerning market competition and national discrimination. She also proposes ways of anticipating which of this court's legal interpretations are likely to inspire major reforms.Justice Contained closes with a comparative analysis of judicial power, identifying the ECJ as an institution with greater similarities to domestic courts than to international organizations. The book advances a deeper understanding both of the court's contributions to European integration and of the political economy of litigation and reform.

The European chemical industry is the largest in the world but it is by no means the only source of occupational exposure to chemical hazards, because chemical products are both used and are bi-products in many diverse forms of work. This book is a study of strategic approaches to managing the risks of working with hazardous substances in Europe.

Supply chain management helped companies to manage volumes, fulfil customer demand and optimize costs in production and distribution. Specifically, chemical industry companies with high complexity in production and distribution used supply chain management to steer their operations. Confronted with globalization and increasing raw material and sales price volatility, optimizing supply chain costs is no longer sufficient to ensure the overall profitability of the business. Value chain management takes supply chain management to the next level by integrating all volume and value decisions from sales to procurement. The book presents the value chain management concept and demonstrates how it is applied in a global value chain planning model for commodities in the chemical industry. A comprehensive industry case study illustrates the effects of decision making integration, e.g. the influence of raw material prices or exchange rates on optimal sales, production, distribution and procurement plans as well as overall company profitability.

This ground-breaking volume provides a new perspective on the EU’s foreign policy and offers a reconstruction of EU research that extends beyond narrow-minded concepts of ‘power’ and ‘actorness’. Focusing on two intertwined research questions, it presents a more sustainable base for studying EU foreign policy: What is the EU’s foreign policy quality in terms of ‘actorness’ and ‘power’ compared to other types of actors in international relations and global politics? What factors influence the EU’s foreign policy performance in comparison to states and international organizations? This guiding principle and application of a ‘grounded theory’ or ‘heuristic case study’ approach allows the book to deliver a structured comparative analysis of EU foreign policy, comparing findings across policy fields, different legal foundations and respective policy modes of governance. This book will be of key interest to students and scholars of European Union studies, European Union foreign policy studies, international relations, and security policy studies.