Returns processing cost

Capital costs and overhead vary among producers, and include expected return on investment. Fuel and power vary geographically. Labor and maintenance are significant processing cost factors as shown in the rough cost array that is a result of our experience with cubing and pelleting systems for various residues. 

Since we are here concerned mainly with pharmaceutical and, especially, biopharmaceutical freeze-drying, processing costs are of secondary importance. Care must however be taken that limited freeze-drying capacity does not give rise to production problems. Thus, where the total drier capacity threatens to become the limiting factor in the production cycle, the best remedy is to examine whether, and how the cycle length might be reduced, commensurate with the maintenance of an acceptable product quality. This is a problem to which we shall return several times. 

Process productivity cost reductions Are there processing costs that the choice of a premium additive could reduce, offsetting the additive s cost and providing even greater returns For example , can line speeds be increased with the additive Scrap reduced Higher recycled content levels made feasible by a suonger AO (See Case 3.3, for example.)... 

Process Cost of Innovation Returns from Innovation Approximate ratio of returns to cost ( per )... 

Return process is costly and time consuming (e.g., shipments are often returned without referencing RMA numbers)... 

Obviously, therefore, the expectations that apply to any base material impinge on decision-making processes at several different levels. Alongside purely technical aspects such as intrinsic loadability and compatibility and the basic workability properties, ecological factors (e.g., suitability for return to the natural materials cycle) and of course economic factors (e.g., procurement costs and processing costs) influence materials development and selection. 

Ethane feed gives the lowest cost of production and the lowest capital investment. As the feeds become successively heavier, cost of production increases as well as the capital investment required. Depending on the cost of feedstock and the value of the co-products, processing heavier feedstocks can lead to lower returns on investment. Table 13 shows the effect on capital investment for various feedstocks as well as for a range of capacities. 

This example is a simplified one. The cost of the working capital is assumed to be paid for in Y ear 0 and returned in Y ear 10. In practice, working capitalincreases with the production rate. Thus there may be an annual expenditure on working capital in a number of vears subsequent to Y ear 0. Except in loss-making years, this is usually treated as an expense of the process. In loss-making years the cash injection for working capital is included in the At for that year. 

Insurance and Ri In the venture-premium method of assessment, risky investments are required to yield a rate of return that adds a premium to the cost of finance. D. F. Rudd and C. C. Watson (The Strategy of Process Engineering, Wiley, New York, 1968, p. 91) consider this relationship ... 

Storage and receiving are activities that can greatly contribute to a safe and economic operation. It is here that quality control can be achieved at minimal cost. Label verification and other quality assurance measures can increase the confidence level that the correct chemicals have arrived, thereby potentially circumventing the use of wrong chemicals. Wrongly shipped chemicals can be returned to the manufacturer with minimal or no cost to the batch operation owner. As with all processes and activities it is of great importance to apply the principles of inherent safety, in particular the minimization and attenuation principles (CCPS G- 41). 

This is an extremely important aspect of the whole exercise. The basic purpose of all checks and controls is to reduce reworking, reprocessing, failures or rejections during the work process with a view to produce a product of the required quality and hence minimize cost for better financial returns. A high-cost input not commensurate with the type of the product may defeat the basic puipose of adopting such a system. 

Commercial or production reactors for heterogeneous catalytic processes are versions of the so-called integral reactors, so the fundamental process of design is integration. In particular, the necessary catalyst-filled reactor volume must be calculated that will give a desired production rate. This then includes finding conditions to achieve the desired production, at a certain selectivity and minimal operating costs and investment, to maximize the return on investment. 

Improperly set tolerances and uncontrolled variation are one of the greatest causes of defects, scrap, rework, warranty returns, increased product development cycle time, work flow disruption and the need for inspection (Gerth and Hancock, 1995). If manufacturing processes did not exhibit variation, quality problems would not arise, therefore reducing the effects of variability at the design stage, in a cost-effective way, improves product quality (Bergman, 1992 Kehoe, 1996). 

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