Calculating the cost of glaze and decoration

Abstract

This article continues the analysis ol production costs that was begun in Ceramic World Review No, 45/2002 (see “The cost of ceramic body". p. 118). After dealing exhaustively with the calculation of ceramic body cost in the previous article, we will now go on to analyse of the cost of glaze and decoration. As we stressed in the introduction to the previous article, there is considerable debate surrounding the correct way to calculate industrial costs. The approach adopted by this writer, however, reflects the real industrial situation very closely and it aims to represent the exact consumption of resources in each stage of the production process in the most consistent way possible. For this reason, the method used by the Tile Master Pro software package for management control in ceramic factories is able to determine the consumption and cost of all materials used in glazing and decoration with a high degree of precision. The fundamental characteristic of this calculation method is that it is based solely on the information effectively used on the glazing line, without requiring data to be processed twice. By using the sheets provided by the program directly on the glazing line, all the data archives required to calculate production costs are also updated automatically (fig.1). This avoids having to perform calculations twice with the consequent risk of simplifications and errors of evaluation.