scholarly journals Applying Material Flow Cost Accounting and Two-Dimensional, Irregularly Shaped Cutting Stock Problems in the Lingerie Manufacturing Industry

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (7) ◽  
pp. 3142
Author(s):  
Darat Dechampai ◽  
Samerjit Homrossukon ◽  
Wuthichai Wongthatsanekorn ◽  
Kittipong Ekkachai
Keyword(s):  
Material Flow ◽  
Manufacturing Industry ◽  
Search Algorithm ◽  
Cost Savings ◽  
Cost Accounting ◽  
Production Costs ◽  
Cutting Stock ◽  
Two Dimensional ◽  
Potential Cost ◽  
Product Costs

The textiles and garment industry plays an important role in Thailand’s economic growth, despite facing competition in product quality and rising production costs. Meeting diverse consumer needs and satisfaction has become increasingly difficult, as environmental issues become a major concern for firms internationally. Entrepreneurs require sophisticated strategic management techniques to maintain organizational productivity. Growing industries generate material losses, while negatively impacting the environment. Companies may account for their waste, but in reality, actual productivity is much lower, since hidden wastes are mostly unaccounted for and unquantified. A key barrier to reducing waste is that potential cost savings by revising waste management processes are not calculated. To solve this problem, material flow cost accounting (MFCA) was introduced to reduce negative product costs in a ladies’ lingerie company by identifying and evaluating the quantity and cost of concealed material waste. An effective meta-heuristic called the Two-Dimensional Cutting Stock Problem—Tabu Search algorithm (2DCSP-TS) was then proposed based on the idea of finding a layout that minimized a bin length. The multi-phase arrangement strategy embedded in it can obtain near-optimal conditions for solving realistic-sized problems. To illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed methods, numerical experimental results were compared with those of the current practice. From the numerical experiments, it was found that the proposed technique is an efficient method for reducing negative product costs.

Allocative efficiency, potential cost savings, and power supply price markdown in Korean electric power sector

2018 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 617-628 ◽  
Author(s):  
Myunghun Lee
Keyword(s):  
Electric Power ◽  
Power Supply ◽  
Power Plants ◽  
Allocative Efficiency ◽  
Cost Savings ◽  
Electric Power Industry ◽  
Production Costs ◽  
Potential Cost ◽  
Owned Company ◽  
Supply Price

As one publicly owned company monopolizes the electricity supply, Korea’s power market has been distorted. Firms faced with constraints imposed by a regulatory environment are likely to fail to minimize their production costs subject to market prices. In this paper, we test for allocative efficiency of fuel inputs for the Korean electric power industry over the period of 1990–2015. The potential cost savings and maximum power supply price markdown are calculated by imposing allocative efficiency. The power plants, on average, could have reduced their fuel costs by as much as 22.1% annually. The attainment of allocative efficiency would have enabled the power supply price to be cut by 7.6% annually.

A Product Dissection-Based Methodology to Benchmark Product Family Design Alternatives

2009 ◽  
Vol 131 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Henri J. Thevenot ◽  
Timothy W. Simpson
Keyword(s):  
Product Family ◽  
Cost Savings ◽  
Production Costs ◽  
Manufacturing Cost ◽  
Successful Implementation ◽  
Product Family Design ◽  
Potential Cost ◽  
Product Families ◽  
Product Platforms ◽  
Design Alternatives

Today’s companies are pressured to develop platform-based product families to increase variety, while keeping production costs low. Determining why a platform works, and alternatively why it does not, is an important step in the successful implementation of product families and product platforms in any industry. Internal and competitive benchmarking is essential to obtain knowledge of how successful product families are implemented, thus avoiding potential pitfalls of a poor product platform design strategy. While the two fields of product family design and benchmarking have been growing rapidly lately, we have found few tools that combine the two for product family benchmarking. To address this emerging need, we introduce the product family benchmarking method (PFbenchmark) to assess product family design alternatives (PFDAs) based on commonality/variety tradeoff and cost analysis. The proposed method is based on product family dissection, and utilizes the Comprehensive Metric for Commonality developed in previous work to assess the level of commonality and variety in each PFDA, as well as the corresponding manufacturing cost. The method compares not only (1) existing PFDAs but also (2) the potential cost savings and commonality/variety improvement after redesign using two plots—the commonality/variety plot and the cost plot—enabling more effective comparisons across PFDAs. An example of benchmarking of two families of valves is presented to demonstrate the proposed method.

Defence Industrial Policy in a Military Alliance

2006 ◽  
Vol 43 (4) ◽  
pp. 473-489 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keith Hartley
Keyword(s):  
Industrial Policy ◽  
Economies Of Scale ◽  
Cost Savings ◽  
Production Costs ◽  
Burden Sharing ◽  
Gains From Trade ◽  
Potential Cost ◽  
Research Issues ◽  
Military Alliance ◽  
The Eu

Much of the alliance literature has focused on the collective defence benefits and burden-sharing. This article considers the potential for developing a defence industrial policy in a military alliance. Previous proposals from the literature are reviewed, especially proposals for economic specialization based on comparative advantage applied to both armed forces and defence industries in a military alliance. European Union (EU) defence policy is outlined, including its armaments agencies (OCCAR and the European Defence Agency), and inefficiencies in EU defence markets are identified. Economic theory offers some policy guidelines for an efficient defence industrial policy in a military alliance, including gains from trade and competition, from learning and scale economies, and from reducing the duplication of costly R&D. These economic principles are applied to the EU and are also applicable to NATO. Evidence of efficiency gains from trade and from economies of scale and learning is reviewed and applied to various scenarios for the creation of a Single European Market for defence equipment. The scenarios include a liberalized competitive market, a centralized EU procurement agency and a ‘twin-track’ model. Estimates are presented of the cost savings from these scenarios. However, proposals for an efficient defence industrial policy will be opposed by the potential losers who will prefer alternative industrial policies involving international collaboration and offsets. Among these alternatives, collaboration is assessed as a distinctive European policy. The inefficiencies of collaboration are reviewed, including its impact on development and production costs and on delays in delivery. Consideration is given to the research issues to be addressed by an economic evaluation of European collaborative projects. The article concludes by stressing the inefficiencies of current procurement policies in the EU and NATO and the potential cost savings from the adoption of a more efficient defence industrial policy within an alliance.

scholarly journals Using Material Flow Cost Accounting (Mfca) to Identify Benefits of Eco-Efficiency and Cleaner Production in a Paper and Pulp Manufacturing Organization

2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 263-288 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mishelle Doorasamy
Keyword(s):  
Material Flow ◽  
Quantitative Research ◽  
Cost Accounting ◽  
Cleaner Production ◽  
Production Costs ◽  
Raw Material ◽  
Environmental Costs ◽  
Paper Manufacturing ◽  
Paper And Pulp ◽  
Manufacturing Organization

AbstractThe aim of this study is to use material flow cost accounting (MFCA) to assess the level at which cleaner production (CP) can improve both environmental and economic performance of an organization. Higher energy and raw material prices are causing CP to grow in relevance and importance. The amount of waste to landfill is increasing steadily. Most companies are using inefficient processes and technologies that are obsolete resulting in higher production costs, which, in turn, affect their profitability and competitiveness. This study was a case study based on a paper manufacturing company using an exploratory qualitative and quantitative research methodology. The MFCA approach was used to assess the efficiency of the steam production process using coal-fired boilers. The results indicated that the process was inefficient resulting in significant negative environmental and economic impact. Environmental costs were hugely underestimated by management, as non-product output costs were not included as part of environmental costs calculated by company. Benefits and barriers to CP was also brought to the forefront at the conclusion of this research.

A Method for Benchmarking Product Family Design Alternatives

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henri J. Thevenot ◽  
Timothy W. Simpson
Keyword(s):  
Product Family ◽  
Cost Savings ◽  
Production Costs ◽  
Manufacturing Cost ◽  
Successful Implementation ◽  
Product Family Design ◽  
Potential Cost ◽  
Product Families ◽  
Product Platforms ◽  
Design Alternatives

Today’s companies are pressured to develop platform-based product families to increase variety while keeping production costs low. Determining why a platform works, and alternatively why it does not, is an important step in the successful implementation of product families and product platforms in any industry. Internal and competitive benchmarking is essential to obtain knowledge of how successful product families are implemented, thus avoiding potential pitfalls of a poor product platform design strategy. While the two fields of product family design and benchmarking have been growing rapidly lately, we have found few tools that combine the two for product family benchmarking. To address this emerging need, we introduce the Product Family Benchmarking Method (PFBenchmark) to assess product family design alternatives (PFDAs) based on commonality/variety tradeoff and cost analysis. The proposed method utilizes the Comprehensive Metric for Commonality developed in previous work to assess the level of commonality and variety in each PFDA, as well as the corresponding manufacturing cost. The method compares not only (1) existing PFDAs but also (2) the potential cost savings and commonality/variety improvement after redesign using two plots — the Commonality/Variety Plot and the Cost Plot — enabling more effective comparisons across PFDAs. An example of benchmarking two families of valves is presented to demonstrate the proposed method.

scholarly journals Optimization of material flow using simulation

2019 ◽  
Vol 263 ◽  
pp. 01007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oldřich Kodym ◽  
Zdeněk Čujan ◽  
Michal Turek ◽  
Nikoleta Mikušová
Keyword(s):  
Detailed Analysis ◽  
Material Flow ◽  
Lean Production ◽  
Cost Savings ◽  
Modelling And Simulation ◽  
Production Costs ◽  
Theoretical Knowledge ◽  
Data Sets ◽  
Production Processes

The strategic aim of all production enterprises is to achieve the highest possible profit, for which they use attributes of lean production that are related and support the reduction of production costs. Using of theoretical knowledge and realization of a detailed analysis of a material flow including mapping of individual production processes it is possible to obtain the necessary data sets identifying savings options by increasing of efficiency, including cost savings. Methods of modelling and simulation were used for the optimization of material flow.

Factors Affecting the Decision to Apply Material Flows Cost Accounting MFCA in Thai Nguyen Steel Production Enterprises

2020 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nguyen Thi Kim Huyen
Keyword(s):  
Production Process ◽  
Environmental Performance ◽  
Steel Production ◽  
Cost Accounting ◽  
Environmental Accounting ◽  
Production Costs ◽  
Accounting System ◽  
Material Flows ◽  
Factors Affecting ◽  
Legal Documents

Applying the Material Flows Cost Accounting method in Thai Nguyen steel enterprises is one of the solutions to improve the efficiency in the production process, using input materials, and environmental performance, as well as to measure more correctly the production costs based on the change of the price calculation basic. Identifying the factors which affect the decision on applying MFCA to the accounting process of Thai Nguyen steel production enterprises by a direct survey is carried out with 119 accountants and managers working at 13 steel enterprises. The results show that applying MFCA to the accounting process in these enterprises depends on the strategies, capacities, the accounting system of those enterprises, and the system of legal documents related to environmental accounting.

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