Fixed-capital-cost estimation rapid

Rapid Manufacturing-Cost Estimates Fixed manufacturing costs are a func tion of the fixed-capital investment and are independent of the production rate of the plant. Property taxes or rates depend on location. They may be taken as 2 percent of the fixed-capital cost of the plant in the absence of specific data. The cost of insurance depends on both location and the hazardous nature of the materials handled. This cost is normally of the order of 1 percent of the fixed-capital cost of the plant. 

Complete Plant Costs It is difficult to compare costs of domestic and overseas plants owing to the wide variation in types of plants and sizes and the rapid changes in technology. Useful data are scarce, and the following comparisons must be used with caution and then only for order-of-magnitude estimates of fixed-capital costs. 

There are several depreciation methods, which are discussed in many economic tercts. Since we want to develop a rapid method of estimating the production cost, we will use the simple linear depreciation method. For this method, divide the difference of the depreciable capital cost and its salvage value by the Ufe of the plant, as shown in Table 2.1. An entire plant or individual equipment has three lives an economic life, a physical life, and a tax life. The economic hfe occurs when a plant becomes obsolete, a physical hfe when a plant becomes too costly to maintain, and a tax life, which is fixed by the government. The plant life is usually ten to twenty years. The depreciable capital cost includes all the costs incurred in building a plant up to the point where the plant is ready to produce, except land and site-development costs. Care must be taken not to include costs that are not depreciable. 

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