Minimum Cost Level Research Articles

Income, Risks, Economic Efficiency of Rice Business and Economic Sustainability for Rice Farmers in Sambas District

The purpose of this research to appraise the income of rice farming, to set the risk of rice production, examine the degrees of efficiency of rice farming and economic sustainability for rice farmers in Sambas Regency. The primary data used in the research was obtained using a structured questionnaire administered to 60 selected farmers. R / C ratio, coefficient of variation, and the stochastic frontier production function were used to analyze the data. The results exhibited that rice farming in Sambas Regency was profitable with income reaching Rp. 7,696,442/ha. The degree of risk faced by farmers is moderate, which is 0.5. The average levels of technical, allocative, and economic efficiency of rice farming in Sambas District were 0.811, 0.986, and 0.80. This result exhibits that paddy farmers can increase their technical efficiency and allocative efficiency to achieve economically efficient conditions. Efforts to increase higher economic efficiency can be carried out by increasing the use of management as well as improving the level of input allocation used by paying attention to input prices to achieve a minimum cost level.

Continuous Quality Improvement by Statistical Process Control Implementation in Cocoa Agroindustry

Downstream sector development for agricultural commodities will encourage agroindustry, increase added value and farmers' income. The development of small-medium cocoa agroindustry is one of the downstream sector development strategies for cocoa. Product quality is one of the problems affecting the performance of cocoa-based agroindustry. Chocolate products face obstacles to meet the quality. Besides, consumers want organoleptic tests related to aroma and flavor as an additional requirement. Statistical Quality Control (SQC) is a method that could maintain production quality at a minimum cost level and achieve efficiency. SQC can see the defect in the production and trend of increasing or decreasing to make improvements. This study aims to analyse the quality of cocoa products with the application of SQC as a continuous improvement strategy. The research method uses a case study. The research phase includes observations, interviews, documentation, measurements, and literature studies. Implementing SQC used check sheets, histograms, Pareto diagrams, and cause-and-effect diagrams related to the product of chocolate by sensory evaluation. Control is carried out in the conching and tempering. Based on a simple SQC, the small-medium cocoa agroindustry can obtain alternative production improvements to increase the final product quality.

Triple-A strategy: For supply chain performance of Indonesian SMEs

Supply chain management is an activity that effectively integrates suppliers, companies, retailers where goods are produced and distributed at the right quality, location, and time with minimum cost levels to provide the highest quality services for consumers. Supply chain agility, supply chain adaptability, supply chain alignment, which is known as the Triple-A strategy, are elements to form supply chain performance. In this study, we tried to apply it to SMEs in developing countries, such as Indonesia. The purpose of this study is to show whether it is true that the supply chain cannot be applied to SMEs, while for a disruption as it is today, competition is getting tougher not only among SMEs but also against large companies, and SMEs need to develop several strategies that were previously unimaginable. This study uses quantitative techniques to determine the effect of supply chain agility, supply chain adaptability, supply chain alignment on supply chain performance either partially or simultaneously. The results showed that all hypotheses were accepted. This shows that supply chain management can be a strategy to create better SMEs performance and can even be used to achieve competitive advantage.

Economic Modelling of Poplar Short Rotation Coppice Plantations in Hungary

No study has been previously completed on the range of sites, potential yield, and financial characteristics of poplar short rotation coppice plantations (SRC) in Hungary. This paper conducts a literature survey to reveal the biomass production potential of such plantations and presents a model that is used to analyze their financial performance. The results indicate that the break-even-point of production is between 6 and 8 oven-dry tons per hectare per year once a minimum cost level and wood chip price within a 10% range of the 2020 value are considered. The higher the wood chip price, the lower the break-even-point. Since the model excluded the administrative costs that depend on the type and size of the management organization, the break-even-points can be significantly higher in reality, which suggests that short rotation energy plantations can be a financially reasonable land-use option in above average or even superior poplar-growing sites. The rotation period of industrial poplar plantations that produce high quality veneer logs ranges from 12 to 25 years. Though such sites can provide higher returns on investment, short rotation plantations have the advantage of providing a more evenly distributed cash flow. To facilitate the wider application of poplar SRC, the related policies need to apply specific subsidies and allow the rotation cycle to be extended up to 20–25 years, which is currently limited to 15 years.

Analisis Perencanaan Produksi Roti Untuk Memenuhi Permintaan di UD. Bunga Bakery

Production planning can be defined as a process for producing goods in a certain period in accordance with what is predicted or scheduled through organizing resources such as labor, raw materials, machinery and other equipment. Determining the optimal number of products to be produced is the key to proper production planning. Production needs are carried out to meet demand at the minimum cost level. The purpose of this study is to estimate (predict) demand which can be used as the basis for making a production plan, by determining how many products to produce, utilizing limited resources efficiently. And increase production capacity to meet the ups and downs of demand. After forecasting by using a constant method, linear and quadratic bread, sayakaya, chocolate, coconut, blueberry, pineapple with the smallest error method, namely the standard error estimate (SEE), the constant method has the smallest error value. The next period is predicted the number of requests for sarikaya bread for 464700 packs, chocolate flavor 1390152 packs, coconut flavor 508524 packs, blueberry flavor 515112 packs, and pineapple flavor 256356 packs.

A Long-term Strategy for Energy and Cost Performance Improvement of Existing Residential Buildings: Step-by-step Renovation in Turkey

Recast version of Energy Performance of Building Directive (EPBD-Recast) obligate member states to keep the cost analysis in parallel with the energy analysis during the renovation actions for the existing building by taking the cost-optimal level of minimum energy performance requirement to the account. Although this cost-optimal level is indicating the minimum cost level for a period, it can provide buildings’ owners with an enormous initial cost. One of the most challenging barriers to energy efficient and cost-optimal renovation of existing buildings is the reluctance of owners to involve in their project as an investor due to the high cost of application. Particularly in developing countries, such reluctance is more tangible as the governments are not capable of providing enough financial incentives for owners due to a large number of buildings that should be renovated and small available budget. A proper solution for the problem is to divide necessary actions for each building to certain sub-actions and apply them as a step-by-step renovation project. On the other hand, the progressive application of renovation activities has some restrictions. It is necessary to define the due amount for households and keep the cost of each step within the payable range. Moreover, the low rate of building renovation which affects the EU goals can be improved remarkably by application of step-by-step actions not only by increasing the number of owners’ contributions but also by improving the time of implementation, proper distribution of skilled labours and directed economic resources. This paper aims to assess the step-by-step application of the energy efficient renovation actions through energy and cost analysis under Turkey’s climatic, economic and sociological conditions. One of 26 reference residential buildings in Turkey is analysed in this paper. The due amount for each step is defined, and some renovation actions and their combinations applied to the case building and the results compared with the base condition. Then a proper combination of measures established based on the cost-optimal analyses. These appropriately combined actions are then divided into some sub-actions; following this, cost and energy studies are conducted again to determine the appropriate arrangement of sub-actions.

Analysis of Energy Consumption in Building with NZEB Concept

The trend in the components of residential buildings is low energy demand buildings in relation to the minimum costs spent by users for their operation. The main aim of their construction is to improve the energy economy of buildings, to reduce the environmental load in energy consumption, to improve the quality of the interior, to ensure the minimum cost level in the operation of buildings and their maintenance in the life cycle. The consequence of increased energy prices and the possible implementation of tax policies in the countries of Europe is more frequently designing and implementing energy self-contained buildings. This means that energy necessary for the general use of a building can be produced in it to certain extent. The concept of such buildings is not only in high quality heat insulating properties, but also in suitable installed devices utilizing alternative sources. The objective indicator of saving and proof of the required level of a building is an analysis of its real energy consumption. The paper analyzes the energy consumption in a specific house which, in the design phase, met the criteria for designing a nearly zero energy building. The analyzed building has a high thermal protection and uses photovoltaic energy as an alternative source. The main aim is to evaluate the concept of the designed nearly zero energy building and to assess it in relation to the really consumed energy.

Design on Carbon Tax Model and its Simulation Results Analysis

The carbon tax is levied on carbon dioxide emissions, its main role is to inhibit the use of fossil energy companies are. In this thesis, a carbon tax model, and the model of the simulation study, the researchers showed that a carbon tax can give companies the right to choose freely choose the way to cut emissions of carbon tax system. Such a system would encourage enterprises to adopt minimum cost level of output to produce.

Mixed passive / active strategy for fault tolerant control.

This paper presents a general frame in which the passive and active fault tolerant control strategies are mixed, by implementing several controllers, each dedicated to a subset of faults. The faults under consideration are associated with different hardware configurations, a problem setting that covers actuator outages, sensor losses, and more generally, any kind of fault when the reconfiguration strategy is used. The recoverability of a particular fault is defined by two structural properties of the associated configuration namely its stabilizability and the minimum cost level the configuration allows with respect to a given cost functional. Since faults are not always recoverable, the efficiency of the FTC scheme is evaluated by the probability to face a non recoverable situation during a given time window associated with the duration of the system mission.

Optimal levels of inputs to control Listeria monocytogenes contamination at a smoked fish plant

AbstractReducing the incidence of listeriosis from contaminated food has significant social health benefits, but reduction requires the use of additional or higher quality inputs at higher costs. The authors estimate the impact of three inputs in a food processing plant on the prevalence of Listeria monocytogenes contaminated finished cold smoked salmon. These three inputs were noncontamination of the raw fish fillets, noncontamination of the plant environment, and rate of glove changes on workers. We then estimate the minimum cost levels of these inputs to reach various levels of noncontamination of the finished product, tracing out a cost curve. Marginal cost is then equated to potential marginal benefits from reductions in L. monocytogenes contamination. Results show how socially suboptimal use of inputs may result because the costs of these inputs are borne by the food processing plant, which may not be able to secure a high enough product price. [Econlit Citations: D24, L66, M11, Q13] © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Agribusiness 23: 229–244, 2007.

Cost efficiency of the lodging industry in the tourist destination of Gran Canaria (Spain)

This paper analyses whether the expansion of the lodging industry in Gran Canaria (Canary Islands, Spain), which has occurred during the last 10 years as a result of increases in tourist numbers and the accommodation made available to them, has been accompanied by a parallel increase in efficiency over the same period. Thus, the cost efficiency and economic scale of the lodging industry (hotels and apartments) on the island of Gran Canaria during the period 1991–2002 are studied, assuming that such efficiency is non-constant over time. The estimation of a stochastic cost frontier model was considered by using a panel data approach. A translog cost function was estimated using unbalanced panel data for a sample of 44 companies over the study period. The overall results indicate the existence of diseconomies of scale, except in the case of small companies, with an operating revenue of less than 3.7 million euros; these comprised 40% of the companies in the sample. The findings on cost inefficiency show that this is time-variant, that not all lodging companies produce at minimum cost levels and that it decreases over time. Specifically, average cost inefficiency is around 17% and decreases over time.

Forecasting — bridging the gap between sales and manufacturing

Conflicts frequently occur between demand forecasts that help sales and marketing to reach their targets and the demand forecasts that help manufacturing to produce the right amounts of products at the right time at a minimum cost level. This gap is a serious problem especially in industrial firms with production lead times that are (much) longer than customer order lead times: production to order is not possible, so a close coordination w.r.t. forecasts between sales and manufacturing is needed. In many companies, this coordination has not been given much attention and, as a consequence, separate sales and manufacturing forecasts are used. This results in high inventories and in spending (too) much effort in trying to reach the customer service level required by the market. This paper is based on experiences within several practical situations, but in particular on an extensive study for an international producer of a specific type of consumer goods (like detergents, fashion, foods and electronics). Within this large international company “Rahanu”, forecasting plays an important role for many years. In this period, each of the Operating Companies (OCs) of Rahanu has developed her own forecasting procedure. The experiences and difficulties with forecasting in these OCs was the basis of the development for one demand forecasting strategy for both sales and manufacturing. This strategy will further improve the quality of the demand forecasts and therefore reduce costs and improve customer service. Based on this case study, we put forward some suggestions to bridge the gap between the different demand forecasts of sales and manufacturing. This is done, not by improving statistical forecasting techniques, but by combining relatively simple statistical techniques with improved cooperation and coordination between the sales department and the manufacturing department. In this way one common demand forecast is created, that is accepted by the production as well as the sales department.