Work center costs

Aside from these two applications of production cost, you may need to implement a complex system to constrain and calculate the resources associated with production. For example, a more complicated process is a manufacturing site that produces cars. The entire assembly process involves multiple process steps at various workstations that are serviced by work resources (labor). You may want to attach a cost function to each of these components, such as startup/setup cost of the work centers, work resources and process steps, the hourly cost of employing the work resource, the operation Unit Process Cost of a process step, as well as the operating cost of the work center.

Implementation of work centers

Production process costs can be affected in the following ways:

1. Work centers function similar to the manner in which sites do, and have fields designating fixed startup cost and fixed operating cost.

   The fixed startup costs are the costs required to build a new work center –therefore they only apply to "potential" work centers. The fixed start up costs can be one fixed number, or they can be a step-wise function if the costs depend on the throughput capacity required of the work center.

   Fixed operating costs are the costs incurred while operating the work center, and therefore apply to both existing and potential work centers. Unlike fixed start-up costs that are incurred just once in the life time of a site, fixed operating costs are incurred over a span of each given period, whether it is a week, month, year, etc. The fixed operating cost can also be specified as a stepwise function.

2. In the Production Process Steps table, you can implement a Unit Process Cost at each process step. You can also specify a Fixed Lot Setup Cost for each process step.

   Work resources attached to a process step can also incur costs. There is a Unit Fixed Cost per each unit of work resource and an hourly rate (Hourly Cap Cost) paid to the work resource.