Lafarge is a French industrial company specialising in four major products: cement, construction aggregates, concrete and gypsum wallboard. The company is the world's largest cement manufacturer. Lafarge was founded in 1833 by Joseph-Auguste Pavin de Lafarge in Le Teil (Ardèche), to exploit the limestone quarry in Mont Saint-Victor between Le Teil and Viviers. The limestone is white and argillaceous, and yielded an eminently hydraulic lime.

1. Value Chain Model of A Cement Firm
Lafarge Pakistan Cement Pvt. Ltd.

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Company Profile
• Lafarge Pakistan Cement (LP) is a part of Lafarge, world leader of
construction materials. The state-of-the-art plant commenced
Commercial Operations in December 2006 with an annual cement
production capacity of 2.5m tons, thus becoming the largest
production line in Pakistan.
• LP is proud of its product PAKCEM which is the leader on all quality
scales. PAKCEM is the first cement in Pakistan to comply with
European Standards (EN 197) and Indian Standards (IS 12269) also
far exceeding requirements of Pakistani Standard (PS 232).

3. Value Chain Model

4. Primary Activities

5. Inbounds
• In terms of input, about 1.5 tons of limestone is required to produce on
ton of cement. District Chakwal is based on the limestone deposit.
• And Lafarge uses its own vehicles for transporting raw materials like
lime stone, coal, gypsum and fly ash. The raw materials required to
manufacture cement are limestone and clay. Rocks extracted from the
quarry are routed to the nearby cement plant on a conveyor belt.
•
Each quarry is subject to a rehabilitation plan adapted to its situation,
including promotion of local biodiversity (animal and plant species),
creation of a touristic and environmental park, residential or
agricultural redevelopment, etc. The use of mobile equipment (forklifts, trucks, mechanical loaders, power shovels, etc.) is a major part of
cement plant operations.

6. Operations
• The entire plant is operated from central control room where the
process operating personnel closely monitor, the plant operation on
visual display unit. The computerized process control system with
field instrumentation ensures the steady and smooth operations of
the plant.
• Flow chart of the cement production process:
Mining
Crushing & pre blending
Raw material grinding
Blending & kiln feed
Pre heating & kiln cooling
Cement milling
Cement storage packing & bulk loading

7. Outbound
• Lafarge Cement is one of the most important commodities in construction
industry. It is a product which is very high in volume and the sensitivity too
is very high. Warehousing is very important component in this business and
the cost involved is not small. There is an ample scope of practicing JIT
(Just In Time) in cement warehousing operations. Even if practiced in part,
it could improve the bottom line of all those companies who practice it.
• Main tasks within a Lafarge cement plant are cement packaging as well as
shipping. The finished cement is either loaded directly onto trucks or
railway cars in bulk for distribution to customers or packaged in special
cement packaging bags and delivered on standard pallets. Siemens supplies
the electronic equipment for all processes.

8. Marketing & Sales
• Marketing is a comprehensive term and it includes all resources and set of
activities necessary to direct and facilitate the flow of goods and services
from producer to consumer in the process of distribution
• 1.Focus on brand name
• 2.Effective differentiation
• 3.Effective public relations
• 4.Price differentiation
• 5.Strong distribution network
• To identify the wants and create customer satisfaction through product
innovation, product quality and customer service Lafarge takes assistance of
sales representative. The marketing department of Lafarge is a
comprehensive one which helps them to withstand the severe competition
persisting in cement industry

9. Services
• In the Lafarge Cement Pakistan, Service increases the value of the
entire product to the final consumer. Especially in cement like
product being commodity quality doesn’t matter much what matters
is product as per specification and after sales services. Competitors
too are very sharp in the cement industry the only way to
differentiate and set a bench mark is the after sales services

10. Support Activities

11. Technology Development
• a) Improving quality of blended cement through innovative processing
utilizing industrial by-products for improved quality performance of
Lafarge Plants
• b) Conservation of resources through maximizing the use of low-grade
limestone forcement manufacture
• c) Development of application oriented cements with decreased CO2
emissions
• d) Development of new products or discovering new methods of analysis
• e) Productivity research for increased efficiency in use of resources
• f) Recycling of wastes and research for efficient use of scarce materials
• g) Characterization of industrial wastes and looking into possibilities of
environment friendly co-processing of wastes in cement manufacture,
leading to thermal substitution and conservation of natural resources
• h) Development and use of cement grinding aid and accelerators for PPC &
PSC for improved performance in concrete and reduced clinker factor in
blended cements
• i) Development of cements tailored for specific market clusters and
application segments
• j) Quality Benchmarking exercise for different market clusters of Lafarge
products

12. Procurement
• The procurement is value addition to purchase it is something more
than just purchase which just talk about what ,when and how but
procurement should include all the things discussed further in the
section. The procurement process in Lafarge is systematic as it is
process industry every stage in the process requires approval from
the authority. If material that is to be purchased is less than
200,000 the approval required from Department head if it is greater
than 2,00,000 than the purchase order approval required from the
Unit Head.

13. Firm Infrastructure
• Over 23% of the production cost of cement is power. It quickly
became clear to us that if we were to run a profitable company, we
need to keep power costs to the minimum. So we focused our efforts
on improving efficiency at our kilns to get more output for less
power. Next Lafarge set up captive power plants at a substantially
lower cost than the national grid. We sourced a cheaper and higher
quality coal from South Africa/Australia and better furnace oil from
the Middle East. The result is that today were in a position to sell
our excess power to the local state government

14. HRM
• Recruitment and Selection
• Training and Development
• Performance Appraisal
• Career Advancement Avenues
• Wages and Salary Structure
• Promotion and Transfer
• Motivational Measures
• Safety Measures

15. Analysis of Customer’s Value Chain
• 1. As the cement industry is one of the most energy and power intensive
industry so Lafarge is doing the many activities for energy conservation as
discussed above for which it has go towards too which no any competitor is
doing. Which adds value to the final consumer?
• 2. Lafarge is the pioneer in thinking about Environment protection & has
done many activities for Environment prevention it has fitted dusting
control bag at every dust producing stage in production plant and has
established green plants.
• 3. Lafarge has performed its corporate citizenship very well. It has built
check dams and temples and many more things for citizens.
• 4. Lafarge is providing excellent after sales services to the customer for that
it has establish all together different department of civil engineer for
guiding customer in construction activity.
• 5. Lafarge is concerned for giant strength it assures this things to customers
that their decision is worth.

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