Measuring Criticality of Raw Materials: An Empirical Approach Assessing the Supply Risk Dimension of Commodity Criticality
Read full paper at: http://www.scirp.org/journal/PaperInformation.aspx?PaperID=53596#.VMnoKCzQrzE Author(s) Herbert Mayer , Benedikt Gleich Affiliation(s) Institute for Materials Resource Management, University of Augsburg, Augsburg, Germany . ABSTRACT Providing a sustainable and reliable supply of raw materials at economic prices has become essential to industrialized economies. Therefore, the need for both economical and sustainable methods and strategies for the management of raw materials has been postulated to enable companies and economies to counteract dramatic effects of supply disruptions, or at least to provide early warnings. The relevant studies assign generic weights to different driving factors and therefrom derive criticality indexes. However, it often remains open how to interpret the resulting measures and how to apply them practically. Here we show that based on current commodity key figures, it is pos...