Last year, iodine availability and pricing were quite volatile due to the earthquake in Japan and the water shortage in Chile. These two countries alone account for about 90% of iodine’s global supply. So when they are impacted, the world feels the effects. Recently I’ve read some news articles that gave some insight on what to expect for the iodine market in 2012. Here’s what I’ve learned:

HCl update: Dow Declares Force Majeure on MDI products

The tech-grade Hydrochloric Acid (HCl) market continues to tighten, and in some ways, it’s a bit of a perfect storm: Tech grade HCl is a co-product in the manufacturing of several polymers used in making durable goods, such as TDI, MDI and other polymer feed stocks. Right now, there is excess TDI/MDI feedstock on the market, so manufacturing of these polymers has slowed, thus reducing the co-product tech grade HCl on the open market.

Today, Doe & Ingalls is sharing the results of its 2011 Customer Satisfaction Survey with those customers who took the survey. As I was reviewing the results, I came across an important question in one of the comments. Because we have received questions along similar lines several times before, I’d like to share an answer here.

It’s good to be blogging again after a couple months off. In my last post of this series on reexamining supply chain fundamentals, we discussed transportation.

Today I’m writing about leveraging your warehouse and distribution center operations to drive effectiveness and efficiency within the supply chain. When examining your warehouse operations, focus on three areas: flexibility, training and the use of metrics.