Lack of valid economic data for artisan cheese making is a serious impediment to developing a realistic business plan and obtaining financing. The objective of this study was to determine approximate start-up and operating costs for an artisan cheese company. In addition, values are provided for the required size of processing and aging facilities associated with specific production volumes. Fo...

T total cost of moving goods by truck over a highway system involves two basic compon~nts: -the public costs associated with construction and maintenance of the road network, and the privately financed costs of acquiring, operating, and maintaining a fleet of trucks. These publicly and privately financed costs are directly linked in many ways. For instance, the more trucks there are, the more w...

An examination of operating costs within a state’s restaurant industry. The study provided benchmark data that restaurants can use to make sound strategic business decisions. The results provided vital information that can be used in conducting future research.

Inventory management requires optimal determination of (a) “when to order”, and (b) “how much to order”. One also needs here two answers—what should be stocked initially, and should one adjust (a) and (b) as time progresses? This paper uses the Bayesian approach to answer these. It uses the classical (s, Q) model and a heuristic search in the unstructured decision space. It finds that one can m...

Some hypothesize that poor consumers pay more for food because stores that serve them have higher costs. We assess how supermarket characteristics and operating costs differ with the percentage of sales from food stamp redemptions. Results do not support the hypothesis that costs are higher for stores serving the poor. Acknowledgements: This research was funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation...

Does information technology outsourcing reduce non-IT operating costs? This study examines this question and also asks whether internal IT investments moderate the relationship between IT outsourcing and non-IT operating costs. Using a panel data set of approximately 300 U.S. firms from 1999 to 2003, we find that IT outsourcing has a significant negative association with firms’ non-IT operating...

This article reports the first publicly available egg production costs compared across 3 hen-housing systems. We collected detailed data from 2 flock cycles from a commercial egg farm operating a conventional barn, an aviary, and an enriched colony system at the same location. The farm employed the same operational and accounting procedures for each housing system. Results provide clear evidenc...

A strategy that integrates an organization's marketing goals into a cohesive whole, ideally drawn from market research, focuses on the ideal product mix in order to achieve maximum profit potential; the marketing strategy is set out as a marketing plan, a good idea, method, information, object, or service that is the end result of a process and serves as a need or want satisfier. It is usually ...

Production costs in general, and workforce and inventory costs in particular, constitute a large fraction of the operating costs of many manufacturing plants. We introduce cooperative aggregate production planning as a way to decrease these costs. That is, when production planning of two or more facilities (plants) is integrated, they can interchange workforce and products inventory; thus, thei...

The direct operating costs and noise impacts of a wide variety of Externally Blown Flap and Augmentor Wing STOL short haul transport aircraft designs were evaluated to study the costs of noise reduction for these types of aircraft. The "two-stream" Augmentor Wing designs were found to be capable of the greatest noise reductions, and to have the lowest direct operating costs at all levels of noi...