ABSTRACT
A great many excellent books on management are written from a general standpoint but none appear to deal with the specific conditions of the plastics industry. The plastics industry became a major part of the world economy during the last half of the 20th century. In the United States, it is the fourth largest sector of the national economy. Although the extensive industry restructuring that began in the 1990s led some to believe that plastics finally had become a mature business, this is not an accurate characterization. No industry that normally grows at multiples of the gross domestic product (GDP) and finds new uses virtually every day meets the classic economic definition of maturity, which is something that has reached market saturation. Nevertheless, the plastics industry
is
being affected by the globalization of competition and the unusually deep, prolonged, simultaneous worldwide economic slowing that began in 2000, but these are conditions affecting nearly all manufacturing industries. Continuing fluctuations in feedstock costs and deflationary pressures on selling prices of materials are putting heavy strains on profit margins, in addition to the characteristic cyclicality that has been the bane of both the chemical and oil industries for many decades.
