Activities consume quantities of certain products to produce quantities of other products. A QChain model can calculate how much of product X is needed to produce product Y for highly complex production chains. When alternative production routes exist, QChain will choose the most efficient activities, taking into the account People, Planet and Profit values that may be specified for each product. «

With QChain you can graphically visualize complex production chains that involve multiple companies. Seeing who contributes what and where – highlighted with different colors – will improve your understanding of the structure of the chain. Added value indicators reveal the contribution of different partners, while summaries per company show the who incurs costs and who incurs benefits. You can extend your model to compute energy consumption and emissions, and assess the CO₂ footprint of the chain as a whole and of its constituents. The model optimization features of QChain can assist you in evaluating scenarios and choosing from among alternative suppliers. «

A chain typically consists of a sequence of production activities, where each activity transforms one or more input products into one or more output products. You link products to activities by drawing arrows. As you add new activities, you can specify the name of the actor who performs this activity, for example the responsible production unit within a single company, or one of the companies in a multi-party production chain. «

You can do this in the products' natural scale units, such as kg for mass, m3 for volume, and kWh for energy. «

Profit value is specified in monetary unit (for example, Euro per kg), whereas People and Planet values are specified on an abstract scale from -10 to +10. You need not do this for all products; by default, all values are set to zero. «

For each activity, Qchain computes the additional People, Planet and Profit value it creates. This value added is computed as the difference of the total output value produced minus the total input value consumed. These added value indicators can be displayed on the value unit scale, and also as a percentage relative to the input value consumed. «

You typically do this by specifying the lower and upper bound for these products (as quantities in the products' scale unit). By default, QChain assumes a lower bound of zero for all products except the primary inputs of the chain. «

This allows QChain to make tradeoffs while calculating the most efficient way of producing the quantities of products specified in the previous step. «

QChain will then check whether it is indeed possible to produce the desired quantities of products, given the upper and lower bounds you have set for one or more products. If so, QChain will display along each arrow the "flow" (for arrows going into an activity the quantity of product consumed, for arrows coming out of an activity the quantity of product produced), and in each product oval the "stock" (the sum of flows into the product minus the sum of flows going out). Products with positive stocks are highlighted in orange, products with negative stocks are highlighted in aqua. Products for which upper and/or lower bounds have been specified are highlighted in green. «

If you need to visualize a network of activities with their inputs and outputs, then QChain may serve you better than other flowcharting tools because of its simplicity. Adding and linking boxes and ovals with their labels is easy, and links follow naturally as you move shapes. Diagrams can be saved as Windows metafiles, or copied as such into Word or PowerPoint documents. «

The limited edition will suffice for small and medium-size models (up to 40 activities and 60 products). The professional edition has no such limits and provides additional features for cross-case comparison, scenario analysis, and reporting. «

Click here to register for such a license. Please note that the licence conditions prohibit distribution of the software to third parties. Interested parties should be referred to the QChain web site. For licenses for the professional edition of QChain, please contact its . «

Pieter's research and teaching focus on the analysis of so-called "multi-actor problems", that is, problems that are difficult to solve because they involve many different parties with divergent interests. He was inspired to build QChain after discussions with Gert Jan Hofstede – a friend and colleague at Wageningen University – who was looking for a graphic modeling tool in support of the project Toolbox for Value Creation in innovation networks (WP-101 Transforum). The limited edition of QChain is intended for use in combination with the Chain Summary tool that was developed by Ayalew Kassahun. «

So far, Pieter has been working on QChain in his own spare time. Given the many challenges of teaching and research, such time is in rather short supply. This could of course change if you would commission a professionally interesting research project to his university that could involve further development of QChain. Such projects would need to address multi-actor problems, preferably related to infrastructures for energy, industry, or water. «