Category Archives: Manufacturing
Unit level costs
Definition:
Unit level costs arise from activities that are performed at least once for each unit of product. For example, machining a surface, drilling a hole, or attaching a subassembly must be done for eacht and every unit produced. These costs include direct labor and material, machine costs, and direct energy costs.
Calculation:
Sum of direct labor costs, direct material costs, direct machine costs, direct energy costs
This KPI is measured as: Financial Value (e.g. €, $)
Interpretation of results: Lower Is Better
Strategic objective:
Increase profitability
Unit level costs arise from activities that are performed at least once for each unit of product. For example, machining a surface, drilling a hole, or attaching a subassembly must be done for eacht and every unit produced. These costs include direct labor and material, machine costs, and direct energy costs.
Calculation:
Sum of direct labor costs, direct material costs, direct machine costs, direct energy costs
This KPI is measured as: Financial Value (e.g. €, $)
Interpretation of results: Lower Is Better
Strategic objective:
Increase profitability
Batch-level costs
Definition:
Batch-lever costs arise from activities performed once for each batch or lot of products. For example, machine setups, cleanup, moving the batch to the next step in the production process depend on the number of batches rather than the number of units in each batch. Purchase orders and inspections are also examples of batch-level activities. These costs occur for each batch, independent of how many units are in the batch.
Calculation:
Sum of all types of costs from activities performed for a batch
This KPI is measured as: Financial Value (e.g. €, $)
Interpretation of results: Lower Is Better
Strategic objective:
Increase profitability
Batch-lever costs arise from activities performed once for each batch or lot of products. For example, machine setups, cleanup, moving the batch to the next step in the production process depend on the number of batches rather than the number of units in each batch. Purchase orders and inspections are also examples of batch-level activities. These costs occur for each batch, independent of how many units are in the batch.
Calculation:
Sum of all types of costs from activities performed for a batch
This KPI is measured as: Financial Value (e.g. €, $)
Interpretation of results: Lower Is Better
Strategic objective:
Increase profitability
Product-level costs
Definition:
Product-level costs arise from activities to support the production of the product or model. For example, engineering support costs for process modifications and product design depend on the existence of the product line and do not vary with the number of units or number of batches produced.
Calculation:
Sum of all costs for supporting production
This KPI is measured as: Financial Value (e.g. €, $)
Interpretation of results: Lower Is Better
Strategic objective:
Increase profitability
Product-level costs arise from activities to support the production of the product or model. For example, engineering support costs for process modifications and product design depend on the existence of the product line and do not vary with the number of units or number of batches produced.
Calculation:
Sum of all costs for supporting production
This KPI is measured as: Financial Value (e.g. €, $)
Interpretation of results: Lower Is Better
Strategic objective:
Increase profitability
Quality Assurance failure time
Definition:
The mean time between Quality Assurance (QA) failures
Calculation:
Time of last failure - time of the failure before.
This KPI is measured as: Time (e.g. Years, Minutes)
Interpretation of results: Lower Is Better
Strategic objective:
Efficient operations
The mean time between Quality Assurance (QA) failures
Calculation:
Time of last failure - time of the failure before.
This KPI is measured as: Time (e.g. Years, Minutes)
Interpretation of results: Lower Is Better
Strategic objective:
Efficient operations
Number of defect goods on installation
Definition:
Number of goods that are defect on arrival at the place where they have to be installed, including the problems that occur within the first 90 days of operation.
Calculation:
Sum of the number of defect goods
This KPI is measured as: Number (amount Of Units, Rating, Etc)
Interpretation of results: Lower Is Better
Strategic objective:
More reliable products
Number of goods that are defect on arrival at the place where they have to be installed, including the problems that occur within the first 90 days of operation.
Calculation:
Sum of the number of defect goods
This KPI is measured as: Number (amount Of Units, Rating, Etc)
Interpretation of results: Lower Is Better
Strategic objective:
More reliable products
KPIs by industry
KPIs can be strongly industry-specific. For example: the KPI ‘Number of unique pages‘ is valuable for e-commerce companies in optimizing their SEO-score, but not for companies operating in logistics and distribution. Other KPIs are not industry specific, or applicable for all private sector companies. That is why all KPI examples at KPI Start are categorized to their most suitable industry. All industry-categories are stated in the list below.
