You own a factory that makes chocolate chip cookies. Every day, when your employees arrive for their shifts, you have to have all the materials in place. You need enough sugar, vanilla, salt, brown sugar, chocolate chips, etc. for them to run the machines and make the cookies. Otherwise, if you don't have enough raw materials, the workers will just spend the day standing around, looking at their phones. Maybe at pictures of cookies.
The formal process of ensuring that workers have the materials they need is called material requirements planning. MRP is a method companies use to plan and schedule the delivery of the right materials, while still limiting unnecessary expenses, like spoilage.
In the old days, MRP involved a hurried guy with a clipboard. Nowadays, companies use specifically-designed software to optimize the process.
Related or Semi-related Video
Cost Accounting: What do you need to kno...1 Views
And finance Allah shmoop What do you need to know
about product costing In a nutshell Products there what companies
make and sell and well track and fix and upgrade
and lather Rinse Repeat until they make a lot of
profit or go bankrupt well especially if the product that
they make is shampoo Well the tracking and accounting for
products is actually strangely complex Why Well accountants have to
find ways to build clients right Yeah that's an accounting
joke Assorted But actually the tracking of products is in
theory a good way to optimize the way in which
managers run a business So products get looked at through
a whole bunch of lenses like this one and this
one and this one Weird products Weird filtered lenses So
let's start by breaking up a product so that its
production fits into a time schema We'LL think about all
the units of shampoo for bald men that scalp and
shoulders makes in a quarter of a lot of units
and gas Bald men shampoo too It's not just for
you know the haired all right We'LL scalp and shoulders
and makes a million bottles in those ninety one day's
important point here Product costs are recognized not as the
stuff is made but rather as expenses when they are
sold So they all sit on the balance sheet as
an asset usually at their cost or book value until
told otherwise those our product costs But then there are
costs incurred keeping the home fires burning as it were
you know making the shampoo But the workers in the
factory keep being paid whether bottles are sold or not
Same deal with the electricity and gas bills and insurance
and rent and so on All those or costs incurred
in that period and in parallel period costs are usually
expensed in the period in which they were incurred like
a quarter or a month or a year is a
period to get a clearer picture of the meaning of
measuring and assessing of all things product Divide that shampoo
bottle into two components you know like that First comes
the direct manufacturing costs of that bottle Stuff like the
goop inside of it You know the bottle itself the
shrink wrapping and packaging for anti tampering security like it
would not be cool for a prankster It's safe way
to replace the shampoo in a bottle of shampoo for
haired people with Nair So that's direct direct cost to
make the thing Then you have indirect costs which includes
like well pretty much everything else Or at least all
the other things that go into the process of making
the shampoo You know from the capital originally spent like
interest on it and now being depreciated on the giant
twenty thousand gallons that oh gu to the commitments of
paying rent on the buildings for years ahead and insurance
and employee pension benefit things all indirect costs direct cost
break into a few subcategories Here is well so well
let's just note um you have materials like plastic bottle
goop inside shrink wrap safety rap thing cleverly called direct
materials costs or raw uncooked materials for a manufacturing company
that makes coffee mugs with swear words on them Well
it'd be the mug itself with raw materials of clay
and glaze and then the ink for the swears and
then the daily cost of the robot Engraving them all
raw materials and direct costs and you have to figure
out how you want allocate cost of the kiln to
drive that thing there That's probably a direct costs as
well Appreciating the capital cost toe by that robot though
the swear word righty two thousand That would be an
indirect costs Got it So if it was human and
not a robot then direct labor would be a cost
of the human painting on you and someone that's direct
labour And then you have the third component of direct
product costs here which is just overhead like think mush
pot for every other expense to be thrown into the
secretaries who take orders and manage the building Maintenance ops
the janitors and of course yes the lawyers Don't forget
the lawyers although we wish we could They're a part
of what's called indirect labor in that they you know
labour but only indirectly to do the most important part
of what shareholders wanted to dio with a company to
do anyway which is to produce mugs or shampoo or
whatever a given company does for a living So we
saw direct materials these things and of course there are
indirect materials like lube for the robot and solvent to
clean spilled clay and glaze off the floor and the
monthly cleaning service for that Oh Gu And also in
manufacturing overhead comes the depreciation of the cap ex or
capital expenditures and the amortization of sales output Deals like
those contracts on anything else They all go into the
mush pot so here's more vocab to throw it your
head as it relates to the cost of products or
product costing You have prime costs like no relation to
the rib Prime means primary stuff you need to build
units of your product It's not just the materials that
go into the mugs or shampoo bottles or whatever's It's
also the labour behind it that assembled it ever so
lovingly ish So the term prime cost is usually attributed
to companies who make some things from nothing's like That
shampoo maker takes eighteen parts lye soap dissolves It mixes
it with waters from Nee Paul then ads fourteen units
of whale blubber and four drops of chlorine which it
is carefully synthesized to be of jaws The right concentration
or density that is the shampoo maker makes the product
prime ingredients for primary costs But other manufacturers do more
assembling then making like think about a carmaker getting great
tax benefits and anti protectionist breaks by assembling cars in
the country in which they're being sold That companies selling
oh say Ford trucks in France Lew Ford might have
made their engine in Mexico then bought tires locally from
Michelin and then brought in windshield wiper seats and other
leather goods from Morocco and then the electric guidance system
from Israel and well the rest shipped in from the
U S Of a Well all the parts were made
They just needed labor to assemble them in France and
be all ready to drive on little tiny one D
five hundred year old roads with bottles In that case
the manufacturing term for product cost really revolves around conversion
costs That is you're converting already assembled subsets of raw
materials into a finished good which people actually want Yes
they actually want these things So if these air manufacturing
costs and what are non manufacturing costs Well basically two
things the company has to be organized or administered So
there are secretaries and lawyers and CEOs and CFOs and
line managers and yes accountants They're all overhead They don't
actually make the product They just rule over people who
do and they get lumped as administrative costs They you
know administer So that's one category The other marketing Yeah
like how do you get stores to stock your shampoo
for bald men And how do you assess what color
bottle works best to sell at Christmas time And how
do you know if you should suggest a retail price
of seven ninety nine seven ninety five or just say
about eight bucks Yeah the marketing department deals with all
that and here's where it gets dicey Let's say you
sell five different types of shampoo Shampoo for bald men
shampoo for bald women Yes much smaller market shampoo for
the nether region And then of course shampoo for Democrats
in the Blue Bottle and shampoo for Republicans in the
Red One Yeah that's five products You spend one hundred
million dollars a year marketing them Well the division manager
of Shampoo for the Nether region just like all the
other managers gets paid on operating profits of her division
She feels she doesn't need marketing because everyone who wants
sf tnr yeah already knows about it and buys it
secretly Yeah they pay cash and quietly walk out of
the store Yet she gets charged a product cost of
one fifth of the marketing budget or twenty million dollars
that goes on her bottom line against her bottom line
So she gets paid a lot less in bonus money
then does the flagship brand shampoo for Bald Man which
really doesn't need the marketing spin because it's a very
competitive out there Well she might argue that the marketing
should be allocated according to the units sold of that
particular product or based on a brand Surveys toe why
people buy a given product But just dividing the marketing
spend in fifties and an equally apportioning it feels very
unfair to her right and make sense Well The company's
most senior management however wants this to be a team
company a team production a team vibe in its corporate
culture So it applies a kind of cost allocation socialism
to the big expenses They're not fair talked to a
bald guy or gal about fairness Yeah well what do 00:08:39.511 --> [endTime] you think Oh no
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