Corporate overhead

Eixed costs include corporate overhead and administration costs as well as those plant-related costs that do not vary with production and contribute 5 to 30% of the total manufacturing cost. 

Having developed estimates of benefits as well as costs, these values must be compared. Since costs and benefits are not necessarily experienced in the same time frames, the same financial analysis methods used by the firm to make its other capital investment decisions must be used to justify the LIMS acquisition. The LIMS which is desirable from the technical and operational viewpoint can then be shown to be a truly beneficial capital investment and not just another corporate overhead expense. 

Additional items, such as corporate overhead, research, and development vary among refineries and companies. These items are omitted here. 

Standard spreadsheets and word processing software are typically available on business computers. Customized HAZOP and What-If spreadsheet software is available from several manufacturers and is either obtained by corporate overhead purchase or by specific location purchase. 

Miscellaneous overhead items such as agents fees, legal costs, import duties, special freight costs, local taxes, patent fees or royalties, corporate overheads, etc. 

General plant overhead—charges to cover corporate overhead functions such as human resources, research and development (R D), information technology, finance, etc. Corporate overhead varies widely depending on the industry sector. Oil refining companies that carry out minimal R D have much lower overhead than pharmaceuticals manufacturers. Plant overhead is typically taken as 65% of total labor (including supervision and direct overhead) plus maintenance. 

Some of the overheads can be associated with specific parts of the organization and should therefore be covered by the revenue earned by those parts these may be called departmental overheads. Other overheads can only be associated with the whole organization these are known as corporate overheads. 

About half of the energy used by a refinery is generated from cmde oil. In Table 35, cmde oil used for energy production is included with Cmde oil and blend stocks. Corporate overhead, interest payments, taxes, and capital depreciation are not included in this analysis. 

The ammonolysis of phenol (61—65) is a commercial process in Japan. Aristech Chemical Corporation (formerly USS Chemical Division of USX Corporation) currently operates a plant at Ha verb ill, Ohio to convert phenol to aniline. The plant s design is based on Halcon s process (66). In this process, phenol is vapori2ed, mixed with fresh and recycled ammonia, and fed to a reactor that contains a proprietary Lewis acid catalyst. The gas leaving the reactor is fed to a distillation column to recover ammonia overhead for recycle. Aniline, water, phenol, and a small quantity of by-product dipbenylamines are recovered from the bottom of the column and sent to the drying column, where water is removed. 

In 1955, Aerojet-General Corporation issued a report (Higgins, 1955) that described a few experiments in which molten aJuminum (and other metals) were poured into water. The water vessel was a vertical 30-cm-diameter, 25-cm-long pipe with a steel bottom plate. The water depth was 23 cm. Metal was dropped from an overhead crucible, usually with a free fall of 51 cm before contacting the water. A barium titanate crystal pressure transducer was located in the side of the water vessel about 13 cm below the water surface. 

Size In commodities, most businesses reach the critical size required for an independent product division almost by definition. The strong drive for economies of scale would otherwise quickly put them out of the game. In specialties, however, the situation is different. Small businesses may well meet the market conditions required for independence, yet still be too small to achieve any significance in a corporate portfolio (while still bearing the burden of overhead costs tailored more to larger units). These should be candidates for sale if they cannot be brought to critical size. 

In multibusiness companies, the invariably skeptical business units and the company s concerned shareholders often suspect corporate headquarters of being a worthless overhead, adding no value. The corporate center finds itself having to justify its very existence. To ensure its usefulness and acceptance, the corporate center should put value at the absolute heart of its design how, in a word, can the center add incremental value above and beyond that which the businesses can create on their own. ... 

The same corporation builds a hopper dewaterer for granular materials that will not form a cake. In this case a series of hoppers with filter bottoms pass successively under an overhead feed. The granular material is then dewatered by suction, may then be washed if desirable, and finally dumps underneath by gravity. 

For these reasons, Activity-Based Costing (ABC), the most accurate method of cost analysis, is particularly helpful in identifying all of the individual costs of an operating practice or an event, such as a chemical spill. In analyzing a spill, for example, the audit team can attach a dollar value to waste of materials and labor, system changes, unused capacity, and the spill s myriad overhead costs, as well as corporate legal, PR, and other administrative support costs, all of which need to be carefully understood in considering process improvements. 

Does the institution have an overhead charge for government, voluntary organizations, or corporate studies Will the PI have access to these excess monies after the study is complete ... 

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