Machine costs per measurement result

Table 12-2. Calculation of machine costs per measurement result...

The machine cost per measurement as a function of the extent of use of the equipment is shown in Table 12-3. In this calculation, it is assumed that the machine is operated on 250 days of the year. The calculations are as shown in Table 12-2. A medium work rate of 1000-5000 measurements per year was assumed. For a very high or a very low extent of utilization of the GC/MS, a modification of the fundamental basis of the calculation is necessary. As can be seen from Table 12-3, the machine costs per measurement result are 21.20 DM if there are only four measurements per working day. This amount decreases considerably with a small increase in the equipment work rate, becoming < 7.00 DM per measurement result for 16 measurements per working day. A graph of the GC/MS machine costs of a measurement result plotted against the number of urine samples analyzed per year is shown in Fig. 12-1. 

Maintaining the equipment in a permanent state of readiness incurs considerable fixed costs, but increasing the extent of utilization of the GC/MS leads to disproportionately high cost degression effects with respect to machine costs per measurement result, particularly if the number of samples analyzed per year is low. The fact that the equipment can be put to a wide range of uses can therefore lead to lower machine costs per measurement result. 

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