You are ready to begin building your cost model, or perhaps you are in the process of electing/upgrading your ERP software and want to plan through how it will support your cost model. 

Yesterday I bought a simple, gas-powered Craftsman lawnmower with a Briggs & Stratton engine. It wasn’t very fancy, it wasn’t self-propelled and it didn’t have a lot of “bells and whistles.” It did, however, happen to be exactly what I wanted – a basic workhorse lawnmower to cut grass at my daughter’s rental property.

In prior articles (December 2021 FORGE and February 2022 Industrial Heating), we discussed the reasons behind the importance of understanding margins (price minus cost) for the seller of any product or service. Your Cost Model is the framework for calculating costs.

As an editor in business-to-business media, I have watched for more than 30 years as good-paying manufacturing jobs slowly disappeared from the United States toward foreign countries eager to build up their economic prospects through basic manufacturing and job creation.

The goal of most businesses is to make money. Doing so is simple if you sell your offerings for more than it costs you to acquire, make or provide them.

Welcome to my inaugural column in Industrial Heating. I have long been listed as a contributing editor for IH, and I am happy and privileged to make my columnar debut. 

The United States and the European Union (EU) released a joint fact sheet on October 31 announcing terms of a tariff agreement completed between the two global economic powers.

In a business, every time a product (defined as a product or service or both) is delivered to a customer there is a cost for that product.

The United States and the European Union (EU) released a joint fact sheet on October 31 announcing terms of a tariff agreement completed between the two global economic powers. The agreement in-cludes terms specifying replacing the United States’ tariff with a rate quota on steel and aluminum im-ported from the EU. As a result, steel and aluminum imports from the EU will be limited to historically based quantities without being subject to a tariff prior to entering the U.S., according to a Commerce Department statement.

It has been a year and a half since the first warnings about COVID-19 forced the United States onto an economic path that defied precedent and experience.