REJUVENATING THE LIFE CYCLE CONCEPT

Robert U. Ayres and Wilbur A. Steger


Managers have long known and used the product life cycle model in strategic planning. The basic notion is that products-and industries-evolve through several stages following product introduction. The first is a performance maximizing stage, during which variants are numerous, design changes are frequent, and production runs are short. Next comes a transitional period, sometimes called the "capacity growth stage," characterized by rapid declines in price, increases in demand, and standardization of the product. Subsequently, the product reaches a s "mature" stage, when standardization is complete, demand saturates, and prices stabilize.

The influence of the product cycle concept on management strategy in the last fifteen to twenty years-along with its concomitant experience curve and market share notions-has been enormous. Perhaps it has been the single most important set of strategic beliefs held by corporate management during the decades of the 1960s and 1970s. That these precepts had such wide acceptance and application made a lot of sense during those years. The principles appeared to be sound and logical; the theories were simple and ready to apply; and a large number of allegedly "external" influences could be considered beyond the manager's responsibility and control.

The conventional wisdom on this topic, in general, and some specific assumptions, in particular, have led managers to assume that the product life cycle is beyond the domain of management-and that it has the same irreversibility and inevitability as a biological life cycle. That is, a product can move through the cycle-from birth, adolescence, senescence and death in one direction only. This is not the case. In fact, such traditional assumptions may be unjustified, and they can lead to unwise-even disastrous-business decisions. It is time to reassess the evidence, with a view toward learning how to control the maturation process-rather than allowing assumptions about that process to gain control.

Another important premise involves a standard strategic implication of the life cycle. This strategic implication is based on a classic techno-economic relationship that is, itself, in the process of evolving. Historically, manufacturing technology has always sacrificed flexibility to achieve efficiency and high volumes. In an important sense, the rules of the game are being changed by the advent of robotics, computeraided manufacturing (CAM) and flexible automation which provides management with new options regarding the trade-off between flexibility and efficiency. These options, indeed, provide the mainspring for a significantly increased ability to control the maturation process.


Why Do Managers Assume Life Cycle Irreversibility?

There are two closely related implicit assumptions buried in the life cycle model that deserve reexamination and qualification. The primary assumption is that technological change in the product occurs primarily during the first stage which is when performance is maximized. It is also assumed that product standardization occurs when technological change slows down as the technology approaches its inherent limits.

A second major reason for assuming the irreversibility of a product life cycle is that the notion is consistent with observed changes in the role of technology and knowledge throughout the life cycle. In particular, the accumulation of "experience" is widely regarded by manages as the driving force behind declining costs with the product-associated life cycle. (See Exhibit1.)

It makes a good deal of sense to interpret experience as a synonym for "stock of knowledge," which changes and grows with the life cycle. The notion that the stock of productive knowledge is acquired as production accumulates over time is very reasonable. It is also perfectly reasonable to assume that accumulated technological knowledge contributes to output in several ways. For example, the role of technological knowledge evolves gradually over the product life cycle. Whatever technological knowledge exists at the outset is largely in the production, (or process) design, and in the heads of the designers and engineers. In the early stages of production, while the product is still being changed constantly, capital equipment might consist of simple, general-purpose machine tools, and the labor force might be skilled, general purpose machinists plus helpers. As production experience accumulates and runs lengthen, the workers learn "by doing" how to coordinate their efforts more and more effectively. They develop skills specific to the product family. At this stage of the life cycle, which is the stage of "adolescence," knowledge is being embodied mostly in the work force.

The difficulty of reversing the life cycle can be seen clearly from the long-run cost curve shown in Exhibit2. To achieve a declining cost curve as and industry matures and standardizes, its scale of production increases and so does the degree of automation (Exhibit 3). The more automated the process becomes, the more capital intensive it is and the time over which it must be amortized becomes longer. What makes this a barrier to technological change in the product is that capital equipment specialization also tends to increase with the scale of production.

There is an important element of "self-fulfilling prophecy" in the life cycle model. If product managers believe that the product is maturing, that is, the basis of competition in the marketplace is shifting from performance to price, they will behave in such a way as to accelerate this maturation process. To complete effectively on the basis of price, firms must invest heavily in dedicated capital-intensive mass-production technology and elaborate marketing and distribution networks. This drives out many smaller competitors which cannot raise the capital. Therefore, the threat of external technological competition is automatically reduced. Moreover, the existence of a large fixed investment in inflexible product-specific plant and equipment strongly inhibits internally sponsored technological change.

Indeed, quite apart from any motivation to preserve physical capital from premature depreciation, firms that are organized for mass production find major changes of any kind highly disruptive. This inhibits innovation and confirms management's notion that technological opportunities have been exhausted. But the strongest evidence for the aversion to change is probably the fact that, over and over, major innovations have come from small "fringe" firms or from total outsiders.

Non infrequently, the established firms do see the handwriting on the wall but knowingly and deliberately fail to make the transition made by others and follow the irresistible logic of their original strategic plan. What happens in reality is that the management strategies thrusting the firm down a particular life cycle path effectively block all alternatives by creating high reversibility costs. Managers rarely recognize that it is they-not the technological imperative-who direct the firm toward its inevitable maturity.

The key point is that the apparent irreversibility or unidirectionality of the product life cycle arises in many cases from deliberate management decisions to reduce the emphasis on R&D, rather than from running out of attractive technological options. The reemphasis is commonly justified in public by executives on the basis of confident assertions of technological prowess that may be pure window dressing.


Management Pitfalls Arising From Conventional Life Cycle View

Briefly, the standard life cycle model of change, linked to the experience curve, tends to lead managers to undervalue the importance of technology and technological change. Three key management pitfalls attributable to this too narrow perspective can be identified:

Premature product standardization

Unwillingness to embrace new technologies that compete with established ones

Premature devaluation of mature technologies

With the first pitfall, excessive concern with capturing the supposed advantage of large market share and economies of scale has led many firms to standardize products and cut back on R&D long before the potential of the technology has been sufficiently explored. Henry Ford's classic preoccupation with the standardized Model T is one well-known example. Ford lost market leadership to GM (and for a decade also lagged behind Chrysler) as a result. The failed gamble by Oxirane Corporation to accelerate the introduction of a new ethylene glycol process, by skipping the usual pilot-plant phase, resulted in bankruptcy for that company. Bowmar's attempt to mass produce electronic calculators, based on assembling discrete components, was doomed to failure by the development of sophisticated integrated circuits that made Bowmar's product obsolete. Still another example is the Wankel rotary engine, adopted and mass produced by Mazda before the technology of a rotary piston seal was fully worked out. Mazda nearly went out of business as a result of this debacle.

On a larger scale, the problems of the U.S. nuclear power industry have the same basic origin. A number of difficult technical problems were ostensibly brushed aside a GE, Westinghouse, and other firms-with government encouragement-hastily settled on a relatively unstable class of uranium reactor designs in order to start generating revenue as soon as possible. The long and expensive reactor licensing process may have perversely increased the pressure to standardize reactor design prematurely.

Cost reductions due to learning are to often predicted on the assumption that no technological change occurs after the initial design is completed. Fascination with the allegedly magical cost-reducing properties of the learning curve has also penetrated government agencies. In 1980 the Solar Energy Research Institute (SERI) Carried out economic studies for various large-scale solar technologies, including a form of solar collector called a "heliostat" to be deployed in large numbers. SERI presented a production scenario in which heliostat design would be frozen prior to the pilot-plant stage, and manufacturing, beginning at the level of 25,000 units per year and rising to 250,000 units per year, would be characterized by "standardized processes and balanced production flows" [1].

The second pitfall, unwillingness to embrace new technologies that compete with existing ones, is described by Richard Foster of McKinsey. He cites many examples of what he calls the "sailing ships phenomenon." Because many managers are conformable with the technology they understand, they tend to try very hard to "prove" that the familiar technology holds more promise than the new one. Thus Baldwin Locomotive Co. was too slow to shift to diesel-electric. (GM, an outsider, took over the locomotive business.) RCA, GE, and Sylvan via failed to see the importance of germanium transistors and semi-conductors: They lost the transistor business to outsiders Texas Instruments and Fairchild. Interestingly, some of the leaders in germanium transistors appear to have made the same mistake in the mid-1960s when silicon metal oxide semiconductor (MOS) technology took over. Similarly, established manufacturers of mechanical watches (mostly Swiss) were too slow to adopt quartz and LCD electronic and technologies. This resulted in major losses of market share to Seiko and Texas Instruments. Similarly, the established manufacturers of mechanical typewriters and calculating machines (Underwood, Remington, Monroe, Friden) were mostly too slow to shift to electromechanical and electronic technologies. As Foster says, "The record is uncomfortably clear: technology leaders tend to become technology losers." This is a management problem associated with late maturity.

At this stage, the danger of hanging on to an obsolescent technology too long is compounded by the fact that senior corporate technologists on whom top management relies for judgment are likely to be conservative, "getting along in years," and unfamiliar with the science underlying the newest developments. They are automatically skeptical of the "wild" proposals of their juniors. With these attitudes being expressed by their own R&D administrators, top management will feel safe in keeping the R&D operation focused on safe, short-range incremental improvements rather than more fundamental changes that seem unreasonably risky but may actually be essential for corporate survival.

The third pitfall is the subtlest. It is the premature labeling of established core technologies in mature industries as "degraded" and, consequently, making them available for sale or license to all comers-including competitors. It should not be suggested that core technology never be sold. However, there is growing evidence that the selling price is often set much too low in terms of real opportunity costs to the sellers [12]. There are times when such a sale may be the best of a set of unpromising alternatives, as when IBM (Japan) was forced by the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) to license its basic computer technology to its Japanese competitors, as a condition for importing technology needed for its own operations. In many cases, however, large firms have licensed basic technologies to direct competitors. Thus, Fiat built "turnkey" automobile plants for Poland and the U.S.S.R., both of which are now selling in competition with Fiat in Western Europe. Westinghouse and GE have both licensed much basic, heavy electrical equipment technology to major French, Swiss, German, and Japanese firms. As a result, neither GE nor Westinghouse has been able to obtain prime contracts to build any major generating plants outside North America in recent years,. Being totally excluded from the giant Itaipu' hydroelectric project was particularly galling. The same two firms also freely licensed their nuclear reactor technologies, with similar consequences. (Adding insult to injury, Fromatome terminated its license from Westinghouse.) To cite another case, ALCOA built a modern aluminum smelter for its direct competitor, Anaconda.

Did these licensing arrangements work out satisfactorily for the licensors? This is a difficult question, since the full implications of the path not taken cannot be known to anyone. The very difficulty of offering an unambiguous answer is a protection to those who made the licensing decisions. The benefits were tangible and relatively immediate, whereas the opportunity costs were deferred and impossible to calculate with certainty. Nevertheless, one suspects that the decisions in question were not in the best long-term interests of the above mentioned licensors, unless the royalties received were far above normal levels.

Licensing a core technology to a competitor, in effect, provides instant experience or its practical equivalent. Assuming the experience curve yields competitive advantage in proportion to market share, it must follow that licensing to a smaller competitor gives to the competitor some (or all) of that advantage. Such a move might be justified in an extreme case of financial distress or as part of a strategy of "cashing out" of a declining business in order to invest in a more promising one. But such a strategy presupposes that the firm has more promising opportunities. It is not likely that either circumstance was applicable to Fiat, GE, Westinghouse, or ALCOA. Each firm remains one of the leaders in its traditional business, though perhaps marginally weaker (when compared to the competition) than it was before.


Additional Options for Mature Businesses

Implicit evidence that most corporate managers view the maturation process as inevitable and irreversible is best found in the actions of managers of major firms in industries widely perceived to be mature or declining. With few exceptions, the preferred strategy is to accelerate the decline of mature, capital-intensive business segments that are performing poorly by milking them for cash flow and reinvesting the cash in other "growth" businesses-usually by way of acquisitions.

Thus is the steel industry, Jones and Laughlin was acquired by LTV, and Youngtown Sheet and Tube was acquired by Lykes as "cash cows" for other components of these conglomerates. Cold Industries did much the same with Crucible Steel. The Youngstown and Crucible plants are now essentially defunct. U.S. Steel has long milked its own steel operation for cash to build up its real estate, construction, and chemicals businesses. It also used cash generated from the steel operations to purchase Marathon Oil. Armco and National have both used cash from steel operations to buy into financial services and other businesses. Stainless steel producer Allegheny-Ludlum diversified even more aggressively, acquiring a number of specialty metal producers, metal fabricators, and appliance makers (e.g., Wilkinson Sword, Tru-Temper Hardware, Sunbeam and Oster). Allegheny International then sold off the depreciated steel segment. Only Bethlehem, Republic, and Inland have opted to remain and reinvest in the steel industry.

Similar paths have been followed by U.S. tiremakers. While losing U.S. Market share to Michelin and Bridgestone, General, Goodbrich, and Uniroyal have long diverted cash to RKO. Goodrich and Uniroyal have both invested heavily in Chemicals. Firestone, having long tried and failed to catch the market leader, Goodyear, is now also retreating from tires. Firestone has sold its bit-truck tire plant to Bridgestone. Firestone also offered to buy Hertz from RCA and still appears to be actively seeking acquisitions.

The sale of core technology-by license or by undertaking to build turnkey facilities for competitors-is obviously another way of skimming cash from a mature of declining business. It is evidently a strategy predicated on the notion that there is no long-term future-"no tomorrow" -worth considering.

The second most common strategy chosen by managers of mature businesses seems to be emigration. A mature manufacturing business is typically characterized by standardized products. These are produced on a very large scale by capital-intensive, highly automated means. Practical rates of technological change are limited by the useful life of the capital equipment used for production. In extreme cases (e.g., an automobile engine plant), the automated equipment is so narrowly specialized to a single purpose that once the plant is built, no redesign of the product is possible during the twenty-year life of the facility. Many mature industries-at least in the United States-also rely largely or wholly on outside suppliers for their sophisticated capital equipment. This reliance means that mature industries, by and large, do not have unique or proprietary production technology. The same technology is equally available to any buyer. Often, more favorable long-term financing is available to foreign competitors (via export financing or other subsidies) than to domestic producers.

Given this situation, another possible option for a large firm is to gradually shift its production base to foreign "export processing zones" with lower resource or labor costs. This option has already been chosen by mayn U.S.-based multinational firms in the consumer electronics, textile and garment sectors, and primary chemical, primary aluminum, and auto industries. According to the original version of the product life cycle theory, this transition is inevitable.

The negative consequences of employment emigration, lose of tax revenues, and negative trade balance have an impact on the nation as a whole and on U.S. workers in particular[9]. Indeed, political opposition is rising and legislative barriers to reduce the viability of this option can be expected soon if present trends continue unabated.

























The emigration option is also risky, as U.S. firms have repeatedly discovered (and apparently forgotten). U.S.-owned mines, oil fields, telephone systems, and other facilities have been easy targets for both ultranationalists and left-wingers in many countries. Many firms have been subject to outright confiscation, nationalization on unfavorable terms, or have been forced to accept minority ownership, even in "friendly" countries such as Canada, Mexico., and Saudi Arabia-not to mention what has happened in Cuba, Iran, Chile, Libya, and India. (The United States, too, seized to assets of German-owned firms during World War II.). Even the play of pure market forces (e.g., currency exchange fluctuations) can turn out to be very damaging.

Frequent charges that U.S. Companies operating in foreign countries do not operate as "good citizens" is not really at issue. The point is that foreign investments are vulnerable to many forces beyond the control of management. They are, to this degree, inherently much riskier than domestic investments.


An Emerging Option: The Rejuvenation Strategy

Three necessary conditions for reversal of the product life cycle are clearly identifiable:

Potential for accelerated technological change

Management flexibility

Manufacturing flexibility

Assuming, for the moment, that the first condition is met, the key requirement is flexibility. Large enterprises engaged in mass production of standardized products tend to become bureaucratic and resistant to change. This involves the very difficult problem of managing people. In recent years, Japanese management techniques have proven to be better at encouraging internal change than traditional management approaches used by U.S.-based firms. But there are important exceptions to this generalization. There is also plenty of evidence that, given sufficient incentive, U.S. firms can become more flexible.

The other aspect of the flexibility problem is strictly technical. It is not a fundamental law of nature but an attribute of the specific manufacturing technology involved that large-scale production based on hard automation tends to be incompatible with rapid technological change. A major change in a mass-produced product, at present, implies a sizable write-off of manufacturing facilities dedicated to the older version of the product. Admittedly, new versions of a product can sometimes be introduced in parallel to older ones. But, if the improvement is extremely successful, the old plant may still have to be phased out prematurely, at great cost.

Incidentally, when such an innovation does occur, the workers in the plant producing the obsolescent version of the product are likely to find themselves obsolescent too. (The new plant is most likely to be built in another location, probably in an area of cheaper labor.) Unionized workers in mature industries, therefore, often do not look with favor on major product innovations.

Is there a way to avoid this conflict between innovation and mass production? Yes. The potential solution can be given a name: flexible automation (as contrasted with hard automation) utilizing CAD/CAM (computer-aided design/computer-aided manufacturing) and robotics [14, 15]. Flexible automation is slowly but surely becoming a reality in the batch-manufacturing industries. It is barely more than a dream for most mass producers of consumer products. Nevertheless, it is expected that flexible automation is, or soon will be, technically and economically feasible. Ultimately, it will be widely used in manufacturing. The major uncertainty is timing.

A quantitative analysis of the relative future costs and benefits of flexible versus hard automation is premature at this time, since the underlying technologies of CAM and robotics are themselves still evolving. But some indicators are available [7, 8]. These technologies are already cost-effective in a variety of applications in batch manufacturing (including capital equipment industries). The range of such applications is growing rapidly under the sharp spur of competition from Japan. The introduction of CAD/CAM and robotics will dramatically cut labor costs and increase machine tool utilization in batch production. The result will be a significant decline in the unit costs of batch products-including machine tools themselves.

This, in turn, will have important implications for the economics of mass production. At present, the major capital items, such as transfer lines, in a hard-automated mass production facility, are essentially custom-designed and made one at a time. In other words, the capital equipment in such plants is inherently expensive, precisely because it does not benefit from any of the potential economies of scale in production.

A future factory employing flexible automation, on the other hand, would not depend on customized equipment. On the contrary, such a plant would utilize a number of more standardized, off-the-shelf, general purpose, programmable machine tool-loaded, operated and unloaded by robots, and linked by robots. Similar machines and robots could be used in many factories. The only product-specific technology in the plant would be specialized jigs and fittings and the computer software operating and controlling the equipment. Such technology would, of course, always remain proprietary.

At present, it is conventional wisdom in the mass-production industries that adding flexibility (or convertibility) to capital goods costs extra. For example, GM has estimated that an engine plant capable of producing either three-cylinder or four-cylinder engines, of either cast iron or aluminum, would cost 15 percent more than one of these options alone [16]. This may not be true a decade from now. Although the general-purpose machines in a flexible manufacturing system would not be capable of operating at the very high rates achievable by some pieces of customized equipment, they would be for cheaper. In fact, the bottleneck may be the development of suitable CAM software.


In many cases, mature industries do not proprietary production technology.

How will the advent of flexible automation in mass-production industries increase the feasibility of implementing a reversal strategy? The U.S. auto industry, for example, is capable of using its formidable financial resources to pioneer truly innovative high-tech automobiles, utilizing light structural metals (aluminum, magnesium), plastics, ceramic engines, and even the long-awaited electric car. Moreover, with a flexible system, it would not be necessary to freeze designs prematurely-at enormous financial risk-so as to jump into mass production. A single plant could simultaneously be producing several different models, even utilizing different materials.

This vision may seen utopian, at first glance. But it is technologically and economically realistic. On deeper consideration, it is the U.S.-based industry's existing strategy of attempting to challenge the Japanese manufacturers in terms of unit cost and quality of workmanship that is unrealistic and probably hopeless.


The New Argument-And Implications for Management

One major premise of this article is that the biological life cycle analogy is misleading in one respect. It implies that a "product" can move through the cycle from birth to death in one direction only. This is not necessarily the case. There are a number of historical examples of reversals in the sequence, attributable to technological changes that altered the product significantly but did not replace it.3 It is noteworthy that a reversal is often-perhaps, nearly always-accompanied by a shift in market leadership.

Apart from the possibility of actually reversing the life cycle in some circumstances, there are very real possibilities of deliberately accelerating the cycle or (conversely) decelerating it. A common strategy is based on early standardization to maximize market share. A firm must develop proprietary manufacturing technology if it is to continue to reap the advantages of accumulated experience.


A major change in a mass-produced product implies a sizable write-off of manufacturing facilities dedicated to the older version of the product.

The revised and extended life cycle scheme is summarized in Exhibit 4. The "market share maximizing" strategy, in its usual form, tends to accelerate product standardization and maturity. Yet it is clearly desirable for U.S.-based firms to extend, as long as possible, the period of performance-based competition-thus retarding product standardization and delaying the onset of price-based competition.

As a result, market share should be maximized only to the extent that flexibility can be retained. Putting it another way, it is increasingly risky for a high-cost U.S.-based firm to attempt to secure and hold a large market share by hasty product standardization and investment in hard (rigid) automation.

A further implication of this argument is that the 'accelerated maturity" strategy may be appropriate for a firm-or a nation-with a comparative advantage in mass production, but not otherwise. The experience curve becomes irrelevant to producers when a product is fully mature and its production technology is standardized. Thus, the "extended adolescence" strategy is more appropriate for a firm-or a nation-lacking comparative advantage in terms of mass production but having a strong technological base.

In terms of competition between the United States and Japan, it is clear that, under present conditions, Japanese firms can still safely adopt the first strategy (as they typically do), while U.S.-based firms should almost certainly adopt the second. As the Japanese, in turn, face stiffer competition from developing countries (such as Brazil, Mexico, Korea, and Taiwan), they too will have to shift strategies or suffer the economic consequences.

How can the corporate strategic options discussed above best be taken into account, in terms of a revised corporate strategic planning methodology? A fundamental change-a new Weltanschauung-is needed if the dangers inherent in traditional planning concepts are to be avoided. Planning system changes and allied management system and organizational modifications will be needed at the corporate level as well as in line-of-business planning, functional area strategic planning, and technology planning. To reverse the continued decline in U.S. technological and production leadership, a better fit between planning/management systems and the new flexible automation technologies is needed.


Rethinking the Basics

That investment in technology needs to be made early (and only early) in the cycle, that technology has inherent limits, and that the process is one-directional: These assumptions are half truths that, more clearly identified and set forth, bring out their own natural contradictions.

Investment in technology needs to be considered regardless of what cycle (if any) is under way. Limits placed on technology may not need to be what has traditionally been envisioned. And potential reversals, considered in advance, can, do, and will occur with substantial benefits to those who carefully think through decisions about technology and management planning in a broad strategic fashion.

Management can, should, and indeed must question the assumptions underlying its basic strategies. When the force set into motion call for an "inevitable," difficult-to-reverse, high-cost path, management needs to examine traditional shibboleths very carefully. "Traditional" planning can result in "you-bet-your-company" decisions that not only become inevitable but also often tend to be made at a time when it is already too late. At this juncture, the costs of reversal tend to be prohibitive; yet the other alternatives, such as diversification or emigration, tend not to maximize the accumulated experience of the firm. Not to maximize the accumulated experience of the firm.

Whether or not it is the realization that faulty assumptions have too long been at work, or that current folklore is just inadequate, there is mounting evidence that a turn about in management thinking may be under way. Broad strategic choices cannot be made without considering technology. Hence, it is crucially important-from the beginning and throughout-to incorporate technological considerations at the heart of all strategic planning. The result would include the possibility of achieving such reversals, as they become economically desirable.

Corporations are beginning to investigate the need to introduce technological considerations, such as those discussed above, into the strategic planning process-from the word "go." A primary metals manufacturer, for example, has initiated a high-level corporate internal investigation into how technology is employed as a planning concept in each of the corporation's functional areas of management, at each of the corporation's functional areas of management, at each of several levels of this management, and across the corporation's major divisions. And a number of corporations have begun to consider the strategic implications of flexible automation and CAD/CAM [15, 22, 23, 26],

These are some of the management and planning implications of such a basic rethinking process:

Corporations (such as GE, Westinghouse, and Schlumberger) that systemically mesh technological with financial and marketing planning reviews will achieve real benefits from additional control over their futures.

Corresponding changes in accounting systems, capital budgeting techniques, and the use of business portfolio matrices [25] will have to be made to facilitate the resulting new flexibility and management control

The composition of senior management should include those with knowledge of technology forces.

Such efforts, particularly if emanating from the top down with a good degree of understanding, can be very important and extremely rewarding. Even firms that believer they have appropriately meshed technological considerations with all others-for example, by placing technologists at high corporate levels-should be seeking is the continuous intertwining of life cycle reversibility concepts and the new technologies.

Achieving such a result will help bring to modern managers a new confidence in their abilities to better and more responsibly control the long-term profitability and survival of their charge


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