Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Cost analysis'

During the last seven years, the total cost for Swedish public transport provision has increased by over 30 percent in real terms according to figures from the government agency Transport Analysis. A similar pattern is found if considering a longer time span. Part of the cost increase can be attributed to an increased supply, and part is due to price increases on input factors that are measured by an industry index produced by the public transport industry. The fact that about half of the costs in Swedish public transport are covered by public funds calls for responsibility in how these funds are used, and this means that information about cost drivers and cost efficiency is necessary. The lack of information about these factors in the Swedish public transport sector is the main motivation for the two papers included in this thesis. In this cover essay, the developments over the last decades in Swedish public transport are described, and there is a focus on the last ten years with the Doubling Project and the market in 2012. As mentioned, the costs as a whole, as well as per unit costs such as cost per vehicle kilometer, have increased in real terms since 2007. Even though parts of the cost increase can be attributed to an increased supply or the price of input factors, this development might be problematic for at least two reasons. First, the ambition of the industry to double the number of travelers by the year 2020 seems to have resulted in a supply increase around year 2010 and a similar increase in the number of boardings. However, the cost per vehicle kilometer and cost per boarding have both increased since then, which can bring into question whether the supply increases have been made at the right places and to the proper extent to have the desired effect on travel. Second, it is not clear whether a price increase for input factors can be viewed as an ``acceptable'' explanation for the cost increase. To the extent that the Public Transport Authority (PTA) or operator can affect the price of input factors such as buses (detailed or environmental requirements, etc.) or labor (demands on take-over of previous staff), an endogenous relationship is possible, which could disguise these potentially cost-driving factors as general price increases. At the end of this essay, a discussion about the lack of publicly available data highlights the non-compliance with EU regulations related to this. More data resources, perhaps with open access, would enable more comparisons between contractual forms, PTAs, and operators, which would provide examples of good and poor solutions and concepts in the industry and would have the potential to ensure better use of public funds. Below is a summary over the two paper included in this licentiate thesis. Papper I - “Costs for Swedish Public Transport Authorities” - uses contract-level data for the year 2012 and econometric methodology to investigate how contract factors affect costs for bus contracts. A theoretical framework is established to show some of the cost mechanisms that are at work in the two most popular contractual forms in Sweden, and the paper provides some insights into what results to expect from the empirical analysis. The most important results from the econometric analysis are that higher population density and a contract being operated by a publicly owned (municipal or county council) operator are both associated with having higher costs. Also, no statistically significant differences could be found when using incentive payments in the contracts. Papper II - “Cost Efficiency in Swedish Public Transport” -has a similar perspective as Paper I, but it uses stochastic frontier analysis to focus on cost efficiency and differences across PTAs. Data for the year 2013 are used, along with other data sources, to derive a cost frontier from which some of the deviations from this can be attributed to cost inefficiencies. The results are similar to those of Paper I, namely that cost efficiency is lower in high-density areas and in contracts that are directly awarded to a publicly owned operator. When comparing the cost efficiency of the PTAs (or counties), most exhibit small differences. The difference between the 1st and 15th-ranked county is only about 8 percent. The difference is somewhat larger when turning to the third and second least efficient counties of Stockholm and Skåne. The least efficient county of Västmanland is about 30 less cost efficient than the 1st-ranked county.
De senaste sju åren har de totala kostnaderna för att bedriva kollektivtrafik i Sverige ökat med över 30 procent i reala termer enligt siffror från myndigheten Trafikanalys. Jämförs en längre tidsperiod hittas samma mönster. En del av kostnadsökningen kan förklaras med ett ökat utbud under perioden, och en del med ökade priser på insatsfaktorer vilket kan mätas med ett prisindex sammansatt av kollektivtrafikbranschen. Det faktum att ungefär hälften av kollektivtrafikens kostnader täcks av offentliga medel ställer krav på ett ansvarsfullt utnyttjande, vilket i sin tur kräver information om hur kostnader och kostnadseffektivitet påverkas. Dylik information är begränsad för svensk kollektivtrafik, vilket är den huvudsakliga motiveringen till de två papperen i denna uppsats. I den tillhörande kappan beskrivs de senaste decenniernas utveckling i den svenska kollektivtrafiken, med ett större fokus på de senaste tio åren med branschens fördubblingsprojekt samt marknadsöppningen år 2012. Som nämndes tidigare har kostnaderna som helhet, samt olika typer av styckkostnader såsom kostnad per körd utbudskilometer, ökat i reala termer sedan 2007. Även om delar av kostnadsökningarna kan attribueras till ett ökat utbud eller prisökningar i insatsfaktorer kan utvecklingen ändå vara problematisk av åtminstone två anledningar. För det första verkar branschens ambition att fördubbla resandet till år 2020 ha gett en utbudsökning under åren kring 2010, och en resandeökning något år senare. Vad som är tydligt är dock att både kostnaden per utbudskilometer och passagerare ökat. I ljuset av detta blir det tveksamt om utbudsökningarna skett på rätt ställen. För det andra är det oklart om en prisökning i insatsfaktorerna kan ses som ”acceptabla” anledningar till branschens kostnadsökning. I den mån kollektivtrafikmyndigheter och/eller operatörer kan påverka priset på insatsfaktorer såsom bussar (särkrav, miljökrav etc.) eller personal (personalövertagande etc.) riskerar man ett endogent samband vilket gör att dessa, potentiellt kostnadsdrivande, faktorer lätt kan sorteras bort som allmänna prisökningar. I slutet av kappan förs även en diskussion om den bristande tillgången på offentlig data i svensk kollektivtrafik, och att kollektivtrafikmyndigheterna inte följer uppsatta EU förordningar relaterat till detta. Ett större utbud av data, och helst ett öppet sådant, skulle möjliggöra för mer jämförelser mellan kontrakt, utförare och kollektivtrafikmyndigheter, vilket i förlängningen tydligare skulle kunna påvisa bra och dåliga exempel i branschen och bidra ett bättre resursutnyttjande av skattemedel. Nedan följer en sammanfattning av de två papper som ingår i licentiatuppsatsen. Papper I, “Costs for Swedish Public Transport Authorities”, använder data från år 2012 på kontraktsnivå för att med ekonometriska metoder analysera hur olika kontraktsfaktorer påverkar kostnaderna i busskontrakt. Analysen utgår från en teoretisk modell visar på kostnadsmekanismer i de två vanligaste kontraktstyperna, och som ger några insikter om vilka resultat som kan förväntas från den empiriska analysen. De viktigaste resultaten från den ekonometriska analysen är att kostnaderna är högre om kontraktet körs i ett område med hög befolkningstäthet, eller om operatören av ett kontrakt har en offentlig ägare (kommun eller landsting). Incitamentsersättning till operatören kan inte påvisas ha en statistiskt signifikant påverkan på kostnaderna. Papper II, “Cost Efficiency in Swedish Public Transport” , har en liknande utgångspunkt som Papper I, men använder stokastisk frontanalys för att fokusera på kostnadseffektivitet och skillnader i denna mellan kollektivtrafikmyndigheter. Data från år 2013 används tillsammans med ett antal andra datakällor för att ta fram en kostnadsfront, där vissa avvikelser från denna attribueras som kostnadsineffektivitet. Resultaten påminner om de i Papper I, nämligen att kostnadseffektiviteten är lägre i tätbefolkade områden, samt i kontrakt som direkttilldelas en offentligt ägd operatör. En jämförelse av kollektivtrafikmyndigheternas (länens) kostnadseffektivitet visar att de flesta län inte skiljer sig åt. Skillnaden mellan den mest effektiva och 15e mest effektiva länet är ca 8 procent. Skillnaden är något större till Stockholms och Skåne län, som har tredje respektive näst lägsta kostnadseffektivitet, samt det sist placerade länet, Västmanland, som är cirka 30 procent mer ineffektiv än det bäst placerade.

QC 20151007

Using geotextiles in secondary roads to stabilize weak subgrades has been a well accepted practice over the past thirty years. However, from an economical point of view, a complete life cycle cost analysis (LCCA), which includes not only costs to agencies but also costs to users, is urgently needed to assess the benefits of using geotextile in secondary road flexible pavement. In this study, a comprehensive life cycle cost analysis framework was developed and used to quantify the initial and the future cost of 25 representative design alternatives. A 50 year analysis cycle was used to compute the cost-effectiveness ratio for the design methods. Four flexible pavement design features were selected to test the degree of influence of the frameâ s variables. The analysis evaluated these variables and examined their impact on the results. The study concludes that the cost effectiveness ratio from the two design methods shows that the lowest cost-effectiveness ratio using Al-Qadiâ s design method is 1.7 and the highest is 3.2. The average is 2.6. For Perkinsâ design method, the lowest value is 1.01 and the highest value is 5.7. The average is 2.1. The study also shows when user costs are considered, the greater TBR value may not result in the most effective life-cycle cost. Hence, for an optimum secondary road flexible pavement design with geotextile incorporated in the system, a life cycle cost analysis that includes user cost must be performed.
Master of Science

During the last decades, the production enterprises have gone through a strong global change in terms of shorter product life cycles, fluctuations in the order income and increased demand of customized products. Basically, a company needs to develop appealing products in terms of cost and quality that are brought to the market in timely manner. As many studies show that over 70% of the total life cycle cost of a product is determined at the early design stage, this thesis work are focused on analyzing how the total cost of robot families can be affected in the early design stage through changing the component commonality level. More specifically, a cost estimation model in excel has been built to see how the total costs of robot family IRB 6640 are affected when choosing different gears for joints one, two and three. Also, a more general analysis has been done where it is investigated how ABB can take benefit of a product configuration system integrated with a robot platform and cost estimation model.The result of this study shows that the traditional opinion on “higher commonality means lower costs” is not applicable in all cases. For instance, considering the commonality of gears within a robot family, the optimal solution out of a cost perspective do no longer exists at the highest commonality possible but at a slightly lower commonality level, lying between 0,7<CI<0,9 using the measurement commonality index (CI). This is because the gears tend to be over dimensioned, and thereby more expensive for certain joints when commonality increases. The analysis also shows that fix and variable costs are not linear to each other, which complicates the situation when trying to describe the change of total costs with one commonality index. Consequently, two different commonality indices are needed: CI to describe the fix costs and CIC (component part commonality index) to describe the variable costs.

Thesis (M.S.)--West Virginia University, 1999.
Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains xii, 152 p. : ill. (some col.) Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 110-113).

Operations and maintenance (O&M) activities represent a significant share of the expenses during the lifetime of offshore wind farms. When compared to onshore wind farms, O&M costs are increased for the offshore case, as specialized vessels, weather windows and rough conditions mean more failures, downtime (decreasing availability), spare parts, and man-hours.This study comprises an analysis of the available O&M data from a selected offshore wind farm. The results and conclusions from this investigation could then be used to evaluate possible reliability improvements and compare options for the maintenance strategies, as well as to ponder the convenience of warranty periods and O&M agreements between wind farm operators and wind turbine manufacturers or O&M service providers.The life-cycle cost (LCC) concept is utilized in the analysis of the wind farm survey for this thesis. LCC analysis could be the starting point to make decisions regarding specific wind turbine models, as selecting the turbines with the lowest initial cost may not be necessarily the scenario which also costs the least amount of money when taking into consideration the whole life cycle. It may also be a great tool to forecast future operational incomes and expenses of offshore wind farms.

Different cost effective design methods have been developed to reduce the cost of buildings, of which structural optimum design methods and cost effective designs methods using estimating data, are the most common. However, there is no record of the use of cost effective design methods in practice. Consequently, potential benefits of such methods remain untapped. This research evaluated the cost savings through cost effective design methods, identified difficulties involved in their use and examined favourable conditions for the implementation of such methods in design practice. The research aimed at investigating whether or not the opinion among practising designers, (structural engineers and architects) that "cost benefits through cost effective designs are insignificant and methods are not practical" is justified. Previous researchers have developed cost effective design methods, but very little has been done to change the opinion of building designers regarding these methods. A proper evaluation of cost effective design methods and a study of the design process are therefore necessary to gain the attention of designers in practice. The opinion among practising designers is that cost savings through optimum methods are less than 10% of elemental cost and 1% of total building cost. The analysis of cost savings of 22 historical buildings have shown that this is not the case. Optimum design methods using the computer to find the minimum cost from a set of feasible designs were developed for reinforced concrete elements; slabs, beams, columns and independent footing foundations. These optimum methods were applied to the design of 22 historical buildings. More than 10% of elemental cost savings were observed. 2.91% of total building cost can be saved using optimum methods for design of reinforced concrete elements, which is more than 45% of the total design fee of a building. The study proved that for a given building, probabilities of total building cost saving exceeding 1%, 2% and 3% are 0.96, 0.79 and 0.47 respectively. Design and build contracts provide not only a facility but also an incentive, to designers to use cost effective design methods. On the contrary, percentage fee contracts act as a disincentive. Therefore, the legal procedures in design practice, may sometimes serve as obstacles for the use of cost effective design methods. Furthermore, current design practice lacks motivating factors to designers to use cost effective design methods. Therefore building construction industry may need to pay additional fee to get benefits from cost effective design methods.

Thesis (M.S. in Management) Naval Postgraduate School, December 1996.
Thesis advisor(s): Gordon Louvau, David F. Matthews, D. Moses. "December 1996." Includes bibliographical references (p. 129-131). Also available online.

Thesis (M.S. in Aeronautical Engineering) Naval Postgraduate School, September 1994.
Thesis advisor(s): Conrad F. Newberry. "September 1994." Includes bibliographical references. Also available online.

The purpose of this thesis was to explore the use of cost effectiveness for interventions in orthopaedics. This was done through three cost effectiveness articles that have been published by the author. In each of these articles, similar methodologies were used. Decision models were constructed for cost-effectiveness analyses of competing orthopaedic interventions. Outcome probabilities and effectiveness values were derived from the literature. Effectiveness was expressed in quality adjusted life years gained. Cost data were compiled and verified from either hospital cost data or from Medicare data. Costs and utilities were discounted in accord with the United States Panel on Cost Effectiveness in Health and Medicine. Principal outcome measures were average incremental costs, incremental effectiveness, incremental quality-adjusted life years, and, in the case of one article, net health benefits. In particular the articles compared the following: 1. Core decompression versus conservative management for osteonecrosis of the hip as a way to delay hip replacement; 2. Total knee arthroplasty versus unicompartmental knee arthroplasty; and 3. Periacetabular osteotomy versus total hip arthroplasty for a young adult with developmental dysplasia of the hip. The more cost effective intervention was identified in each case, along with implications of the results for clinical and operative decision-making. Cost effectiveness was found to be a useful tool in orthopaedic surgery under limited circumstances of either scarce data on new interventions or the need to use more resources to achieve greater effectiveness. It also can provide excellent insight into ways to direct future clinical research.

Competition and the associated challenges in the automotive industry are increasing. Products are becoming more complex to satisfy growing needs of the consumers and products need to be cheaper and produced quicker. The automotive industry is responding to these challenges, by developing products within collaborative and extended enterprises across diverse geographical location. New customer requirements imply high frequency changes to the initial design requirements. Current unstructured approaches are not robust to deal with the volume and complexity of the nature of product changes in this environment. The aim of this research is to develop two methodologies, one for requirements extraction methodology (REXTRAM) and the second cost impact analysis methodology (CIAM) within the automotive industry. The research was conducted in a collaborative development environment between automotive Original Equipment Manufacturers and Tier 1 Suppliers. The thesis has proposed two novel methodologies. The first methodology (REXTRAM) extracts relevant data from product design documents and industrial domain experts. REXTRAM generates as output a repository of requirements, design parameters and their constraints. The second methodology (CIAM) identifies two types of changes (constraints changing on requirements and constraints changing on design parameters). CIAM combines matrixes and business (cost and time) driver rules to determine incurred (delta) cost of requirement changes. The matrixes exhibit three types of relationships: requirements to requirements; requirements to design parameters and design parameters to design parameters relationships. Case study approach and independent expert are used to illustrate the application and the capability of both methodologies. In this way this research proposes a tested and validated set of methodologies for the extraction of relevant data and the cost impact analysis of requirement changes and its challenges. The resultant methodologies have widespread application in the context of complex mechanical designs. The research also identifies future research directions in the relevant areas.

Bedside terminals are an approach to data entry that is maximally effective, due to capture at the point of care, to meet the challenges facing nursing today in relation to information documentation. The purpose of this evaluation research study was to determine if bedside terminals are justifiable though a cost-benefit analysis.The General Systems Theory, which was formulated by Ludwig von Bertalanffy in the late 1920's, was the theoretical framework used for this study (Putt, 1978).A non-standardized checklist of factors was developed by the researcher to evaluate the associated costs. related to bedside terminals. The factors included patient census, acuity, lost charges, reimbursement denials, and medication errors.A convenience sample of one surgical nursing unit from a large midwestern metropolitan hospital was chosen for data collection. Based on the literature, monetary values werearbitrarily assigned to the factors. Costs were assigned based on projected figures for bedside terminal implementation in 1993 obtained from the literature. All participants were notified of rights as human subjects and the confidentiality of this study.This study was significant because the results will be added to the limited information on the justification of bedside terminals using a cost-benefit analysis available in the current literature.Projections of bedside terminal costs were limited due to the unwillingness of bedside terminal vendors to provide current costs to compare against the quantitative benefits collected in this study. Reimbursement denials were not obtained due to the accounting practices of the institution. Due to these limitations, a prospective rather than the retrospective approach used in this study for data collection would be recommended to ensure obtaining information on all data elements. The results of this study should be considered when contemplating purchase of bedside terminals. Based on the results of this cost-benefit analysis study, the purchase of bedside terminals is cost-justified. A favorable return on investment of a one year payback was obtained.
School of Nursing

Bedside computer terminals are an approach to data entry that is maximally effective to meet the challenges facing nursing today and process hospital information. The purpose of this evaluation research study was to determine if bedside computers are justifiable through a cost-benefit analysis. Costbenefit analysis was done to determine whether the benefits outweigh the costs involved in implementing a bedside computer system.The General Systems Theory formulated by Ludwig von Betalanaffy was the theoretical framework utilized for this project. A non-standardized checklist of factors was developed from the literature review. The factors included were patient census, acuity, lost charges, reimbursement denials, and medicine errors. Interrater reliability was established by a panel ofthree experts on cost-benefit analysis.A convenience sample of one 42 bed nursing unit from a large metropolitan Midwestern hospital was chosen for data retrieval. One month of financial data was analyzed for this study. The procedures for the protection of human subjects were followed.The study showed that bedside computers are costjustified.-based on the results of the cost-benefit analysis. The projection of cost versus benefits realized from the bedside terminals was limited due to the unwillingness of vendors to share actual cost information. Reimbursement denials were unable to be retrieved because of the financial accounting practices of the institution chosen.A prospective approach rather than the retrospective approach utilized in this study may produce the data necessary for reimbursement denials. Recognizing its limitations, the results of this study should be considered when contemplating the purchase of bedside terminals or the increasingly more advanced technology of hand-held and voice activated computers.
School of Nursing

This thesis studies the impact of transaction costs on stocks prices and examine the impact of institutional investors and high frequency traders (HFTs) on market quality and transaction costs. It is comprised of three chapters. Chapter 2 uses a clean and novel field experiment to study how stock prices of publicly listed companies respond to changes in transaction costs. Using the SEC's pilot program that increased the tick size for approximately 1,200 randomly chosen stocks, we find a decrease in market capitalization of $7 billion for stocks affected by the larger tick size relative to a control group. We find that the increase in the present value of transaction costs accounts for a small percentage of the price decrease. We study channels of price variation due to changes in expected returns: investor horizon, liquidity risk, and information risk. The evidence suggests that trading frictions affect the cost of capital. Chapter 3 examines the effects of multimarket high-frequency trading (HFT) activity on liquidity co-movements across different markets. Multimarket trading by HFTs connects individual markets in a single network, which should induce stronger network-wide liquidity co-movements. We use the staggered introduction of an alternative trading platform, Chi-X, in European equity markets as our instrument for an exogenous increase in multimarket HFT activity. Consistent with our predictions, we find that liquidity co-movements within the aggregate network of European markets significantly increase after the introduction of Chi-X and even exceed liquidity co-movements within the home market. They are especially strong in down markets and for stocks with a higher intensity of HFT trading in the post-Chi-X period. Chapter 4 studies optimality of trade execution by institutional trading desks. We document the presence of negative autocorrelation in intraday stock return and show that the temporary price pressure is larger at the beginning and the end of the day. Institutional trading volume exhibits similar intraday pattern. We relate the periodity of price pressure to trading desks' performance using a proprietary database of institutional investor trades. We find that execution quality is the worst at the end of the day yet institutional trading volume is also surprisingly high. Poorer performing brokers in terms of execution shortfall trade more in the last hour of the day, have a higher execution cost at the end of the day, and carry out less order splitting at the end of the day. Our findings suggest that intraday price pressure stems from end of the day clustering of under-performing trading desks strategies results in higher trading costs and poorer execution quality. A trading strategy exploiting this intraday predictability yields a monthly return of 16.11%. Our results have implications on the impact of broker selection and execution strategy on trading costs.

Programming resource-sensitive systems, such as real-time embedded systems, requires guaranteeing both the functional correctness of computations and also that time and space usage fits within constraints imposed by hardware limits or the environment. Functional programming languages have proved very good at meeting the former logical kind of guarantees but not the latter resource guarantees. This thesis contributes to demonstrate the applicability of functional programming in resource-sensitive systems with an automatic program analysis for obtaining guaranteed upper bounds on dynamic space usage of functional programs. Our analysis is developed for a core subset of Hume, a domain-specific functional language targeting resource-sensitive systems (Hammond et al. 2007), and presented as a type and effect system that builds on previous sized type systems (Hughes et al. 1996, Chin and Khoo 2001) and effect systems for costs (Dornic et al. 1992, Reistad and Giord 1994, Hughes and Pareto 1999). It extends previous approaches by using abstract interpretation techniques to automatically infer linear approximations of the sizes of recursive data types and the stack and heap costs of recursive functions. The correctness of the analysis is formally proved with respect to an operational semantics for the language and an inference algorithm that automatically reconstructs size and cost bounds is presented. A prototype implementation of the analysis and operational semantics has been constructed and used to experimentally assess the quality of the cost bounds with some examples, including implementations of textbook functional programming algorithms and simplified embedded systems.

This study examined if physician assistants (PAs) are cost-beneficial to employers. In an era of cost accountability, questions arise about whether a visit to a PA for an episode of care differs from a visit to a physician, and if PAs erode their cost-effectiveness by the manner in which they manage patients. Four common acute medical conditions seen by PAs and physicians within a large health maintenance organization were identified to study. An episode approach was undertaken to identify all laboratory, imaging, medication and provider costs for these diagnoses. Over 12,700 medical office visits were analyzed and assigned to each type of provider and medical department. Patient variables included age, gender, and health status. A multivariate analysis identified significant cost differences in each cohort of patients. In every condition managed by PAs, the total cost of the visit was less than that of a physician in the same department. This was significant for episodes of shoulder tendinitis, otitis media, and urinary tract infections. In no instance were PAs statistically different from physicians in use of laboratory and imaging costs. In each instance the total cost of the episode was less when treated by a PA. Sometimes PAs ordered fewer laboratory tests than physicians. There were no differences in the rate of return visits for a diagnosis between physicians and PAs. Patient differences were held constant for age, gender, and health status. This study affirms that PAs are not only cost-effective from a labor standpoint but are also cost-beneficial to those who employ them. In most cases, they order resources for diagnosis and treatment in a manner similar to physicians for an episode of care, but the cost of an episode of an illness is more economical overall when the P A delivers the care. This study validates the federal policy of support for primary care P A education and suggests that PA employment should be expanded in many sectors of the health care system. These findings and the results of this cost-benefit model are evidence of its validity in predicting health care costs.

Cost benefit analysis is the conventional method of evaluating automobile transportation improvements. This study examined traditional automobile evaluation methods and applied the same techniques to bicycle transportation projects. Cost data from recent research is summarized and eleven costs (five internal and six external) were estimated. The cost estimates are used to calculate automobile and bicycle costs per mile of travel. A case study of a hypothetical corridor is used to demonstrate how the transportation costs can be applied to specific planning problems. The case study explores what effect shifts in modal distribution would have on the cost effectiveness of automobile and bicycle alternatives. The findings of the study begin to question the underlying premises of traditional cost benefit analysis in transportation projects. The study suggests that conventional analysis is fundamentally flawed and biased toward automobile transportation.
Department of Urban Planning

The United States Navy has a number of entities that work together to ensure aircraft in the Navy are supplied with the parts and materials required to maintain mission readiness. An analysis of the operating and support system costs will characterize cost variance across Organizational, Intermediate and Depot level maintenance. We will examine both labor and material cost for both reparable and consumable items, and categorize those costs by type of maintenance action. This analysis is intended to help in the development of a cost model which could aid in both budget planning and execution.

In recent years, there has been much debate regarding the rationality of consumption and cost effectiveness of antidepressants. The economic aspects of treating depression are becoming more frequently evaluated as newer antidepressants become available and as healthcare entities attempt to address increasing costs. The aim of the research. To investigate and assess the possibilities of a more rational use of the public and private funds of the Lithuanian population in the cases of medicament depression treatment. The tasks of the research: 1. To perform a comparative analysis of the antidepressant consumption in the years 2004 to 2009 in Lithuania. 2. To evaluate depression diagnosis and treatment effectiveness and depression diagnosis dynamics in Lithuania from 2004 to 2009. 3. To perform antidepressant cost analysis from 2004 to 2009 in Lithuania. 4. To perform the cost-effectiveness analysis of depression treatment and propose the possible ways for costs rationalization. Scientific novelty of the research. For the first time, depression relapse rate was used as a medicament depression treatment effectiveness evaluation indicator in assessing the rationality of the costs of treatment with antidepressants. The survey data can be used in practice when dealing with antidepressants consumption and the improvement of the effectiveness of evaluation and reimbursement systems in Lithuania.
Pastaraisiais metais kyla daug diskusijų dėl antidepresantų panaudojimo racionalumo bei sąnaudų efektyvumo. Rinkoje atsirandant naujiems antidepresantams vis dažniau analizuojami ekonominiai depresijos gydymo aspektai, o sveikatos priežiūros sektoriaus valdymo institucijos bando spręsti išlaidų didėjimo problemą. Darbo tikslas. Ištirti ir įvertinti galimybes racionaliau naudoti viešąsias ir privačias Lietuvos gyventojų lėšas vaistams, skiriamiems medikamentiniam depresijos atvejų gydymui. Darbo uždaviniai. 1. Atlikti lyginamąją antidepresantų sunaudojimo 2004–2009 m. Lietuvoje analizę. 2. Įvertinti depresijos diagnozavimo ir gydymo efektyvumą bei depresijos diagnozavimo dinamiką Lietuvoje 2004–2009 m. 3. Atlikti išlaidų antidepresantams per 2004–2009 m. Lietuvoje analizę. 4. Atlikti depresijos gydymo sąnaudų efektyvumo analizę ir pateikti galimus išlaidų racionalizavimo būdus. Darbo mokslinis naujumas ir praktinė reikšmė. Vertinant gydymo antidepresantais išlaidų racionalumą, pirmą kartą kaip medikamentinio depresijos atvejų efektyvaus gydymo vertinimo indikatorius buvo panaudotas depresijos pasikartojimo rodiklis. Tyrimo rezultatai gali būti naudojami praktikoje, nagrinėjant antidepresantų panaudojimą, sąnaudų efektyvumo vertinimą ir kompensavimo sistemos tobulinimą Lietuvoje.

Over the last decade, six major earthquakes that occurred in Turkey dramatically demonstrated the poor performance of the buildings that were designed and constructed far from Turkish seismic code&rsquo
s requirements. The Marmara region, where most of the population and industry is located, is in the active seismic zone. With the rising cost of damages due to earthquakes, the necessity of the cost-benefit analysis for various rehabilitation strategies used in existing buildings has become a major concern for the decision makers who are in the position of making decisions on the building rehabilitation This study evaluates the performance of two different rehabilitation strategies applied to two five-story reinforced concrete buildings and assesses their cost-benefit analyses. These buildings were chosen to be representative of the typical residential To carry out the structural analysis of the buildings, three-dimensional models of the buildings were developed using SAP2000 [6]. Two alternative strengthening methods, insertion of reinforced concrete shear walls and application of Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymers (CFRP) on hallow clay tile infill walls, were used for both of the buildings. While modeling infill walls strengthened with CFRP, two specific modeling attempts proposed by the researchers at Middle East Technical University were used. Pushover analyses were performed to evaluate seismic performance of the buildings. The Life Safety criterion was chosen as the rehabilitation objective. The global and component response acceptability limits were checked and the cost-benefit analysis was performed in order to determine the most attractive rehabilitation alternative. The results and comparisons given here illustrated that strengthening with shear wall had the most significant improvement on the seismic performance and cost effectiveness of the case study buildings. Outcomes of this study are only applicable to the buildings employed here and are bound by the assumptions made, approximations used and parameters considered in this study. The findings cannot be generalized for the buildings rehabilitated with CFRP due to lack of the consistent models for CFRP application. More research needs to be conducted to provide solid guidelines and reliable models applicable to the CFRP rehabilitated infill walls.

En totalkostnadsanalys som jämför två olika alternativ för armering. I första alternativet tillverkar företaget sin egen armering på ett lager för att sedan transportera ut armeringen till byggarbetsplatsen i färdiga armeringskorgar. I det andra alternativet beställs ILF (inläggningsfärdig armering) som levereras direkt till byggarbetsplatsen där den sedan knyta. Rapporten innehåller en beskrivande teoretisk referensram, noggrann beskriv av beräkningsgången samt analys och slutsatser utifrån resultaten i beräkningarna.

I detta arbete har totalkostnadseffekterna vid ett införande av klickgips studerats. Resultatet visade att klickgips skulle kunna minska ned byggentreprenörens totalkostnad vid uppförande av mellanväggar i gips genom att processen effektiviseras.

The purpose of this paper is to present a sample of how Swedish manufacturing companies deal with equipment downtime cost, and further how they analyze its reduction. The study was performed by conducting a web-based survey within Swedish firms that have at least 200 employees. The main results obtained from the investigation show that the estimated downtime cost constitute about 23.9 % from the total manufacturing cost ratio, and 13.3 % from planned production time. Additionally, the hourly cost of downtime, whether planned or unplanned, is relatively high. However, there is a shortage of systematic models that capable to trace the individual cost imposed by downtime events. This lack was shown apparently whilst 83 % of surveyed companies they do not have any complete model adapted for quantifying their downtime costs. Moreover, only few companies develop their cost accounting methods such as, activity-based costing (ABC) and resource consumption accounting (RCA) to assimilate and reveal the real costs that associated with planned and unplanned stoppages. Still, the general pattern of downtime cost calculation allocated to direct labor and lost capacity cost. On the other hand, the attempts of decreasing downtime events and thus costs were based on schedule maintenance tactics that supported by overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) tool, as an indicator for affirming improvements. Nonetheless, the analysis indicates the need for optimized maintenance tactics by incorporating reliability-centered maintenance (RCM) and total productive maintenance (TPM) into companies’ maintenance systems. The maintenance role of reducing downtime impacts not highly recognized. Furthermore, the same analysis shows the requirement for better results of performance measurement systems is by implementing total equipment effectiveness performance tool (TEEP). The advantage of such tool is to provide the impact index of planned stoppages in equipment utilization factor. Finally, the lack of fully integrated models for assessing the downtime costs and frameworks for distinguishing the difference between planned and unplanned stoppages are the main reasons behind the continuation of cost in ascending form. Due to that, the improvements will emphasize on areas with less cost saving opportunities. As a result, this will affect the production efficiency and effectiveness which in return has its influence on costs and thereby profits margin.

Cost-benefit analysis is an economic analysis tool that can be used to support public decision making, when there are several mutually exclusive alternatives being considered. It compares the monetary value of the benefits resulting from a specific project or policy with the costs accrued by it. However, it would appear that it is currently used mainly for investment projects, and not for analyzing public services. This thesis is a literature study on the use of cost-benefit analysis in the public sector, with a focus on public service provision. The main objective of this study is to either verify or falsify the research gap regarding the initial assumption that there seems to be no existing research on how common the use of cost-benefit analysis is in public service provision. Other objectives include finding out how cost-benefit analysis can be used in evaluating the socio-economic impact of public decision making, and what kind of examples can be found on its applications in the public sector. The thesis presents the theoretical framework of cost-benefit analysis, including the basic steps in the typical cost-benefit analysis process, as well as its historical background and criticism regarding it. The alternative methods of cost-effectiveness analysis, cost-utility analysis and cost-minimization analysis are discussed briefly as well. Some of the leading institutions regarding the research and development of cost-benefit analysis methods are also presented. The Society for Benefit-Cost Analysis is one such institution. It publishes the Journal of Benefit-Cost Analysis, which is the only journal devoted exclusively to cost-benefit analysis. In addition, the European Commission’s Guide to Cost-Benefit Analysis applies the international best practice on the use of cost-benefit analysis in investment-type projects. Some comments in various publications state that cost-benefit analysis is indeed underused and often even misused in public decision making, and that society would benefit if it was used to a greater extent. The literature study concludes with the analysis of two case studies. In the first study, a cost-benefit analysis was performed on the services of the Finnish Meteorological Institute, and it was found to produce approximately five times as much benefits to the society compared to its costs. The second study examined the use of cost-benefit analysis in Finnish place-making policies, and discovered that it was applied incorrectly by public officials in this case. The research gap is verified, as there does not seem to be any comprehensive research on how common the use of cost-benefit analysis is in public service provision as a whole. However, some publications do hint that it is underused in public decision making. Thus, there is a need for further research on its use in public service provision
Kustannus-hyötyanalyysi on taloustieteellinen työkalu, jota voidaan käyttää tukemaan julkista päätöksentekoa, kun arvioitavana on useita toisensa poissulkevia vaihtoehtoja. Siinä vertaillaan jonkin projektin tai politiikan seurauksena syntyviä rahassa mitattuja hyötyjä sen aiheuttamiin kustannuksiin nähden. Tällä hetkellä sitä tosin ilmeisesti käytetään lähinnä vain investointiprojekteihin, eikä julkisten palveluiden analysointiin. Tämä kandidaatintyö on kirjallisuuskatsaus kustannus-hyötyanalyysin käytöstä julkisella sektorilla, keskittyen julkisiin palveluihin. Tutkimuksen päätavoitteena on osoittaa joko todeksi tai vääräksi tutkimusaukko koskien sitä alkuolettamusta, että kustannus-hyötyanalyysin käytön yleisyydestä julkisen sektorin palvelutuotannossa ei vaikuta olevan olemassaolevaa tutkimusta. Muihin tavoitteisiin kuuluu selvittää, että miten kustannus-hyötyanalyysiä voidaan käyttää julkisen päätöksenteon sosioekonomisen vaikuttavaan arviointiin, ja että minkälaisia esimerkkejä sen käytöstä löytyy julkiseen sektoriin liittyen. Kandidaatintyössä esitetään kustannus-hyötyanalyysin teoreettinen viitekehys, sisältäen tyypillisen kustannus-hyötyanalyysiprosessin vaiheet, sekä sen historiallista taustaa ja kritiikkiä. Kustannus-hyötyanalyysin vaihtoehtoisista menetelmistä esitellään lyhyesti kustannus-vaikuttavuusanalyysi, kustannus-utiliteettianalyysi ja kustannusten minimointianalyysi. Työssä käsitellään myös joitakin johtavia instituutioita kustannus-hyötyanalyysin menetelmien tutkimukseen ja kehitykseen liittyen. Society for Benefit-Cost Analysis -järjestö on yksi tällainen instituutio. Se julkaisee Journal of Benefit-Cost Analysis -nimistä lehteä, joka on ainoa täysin kustannus-hyötyanalyysille omistettu lehti. Tämän lisäksi Euroopan komissio on julkaissut kustannus-hyötyanalyysiä koskevan oppaan, joka hyödyntää parhaita kansainvälisiä käytäntöjä kustannus-hyötyanalyysin soveltamisesta investointityyppisissä projekteissa. Erinäisissä julkaisuissa esitettyjen kommenttien mukaan kustannus-hyötyanalyysiä käytetään liian vähän julkisessa päätöksenteossa, ja joskus sitä on sovellettu siinä myös väärin. Näiden kommenttien mukaan yhteiskunta hyötyisi, jos sitä käytettäisiin laajemmin. Kirjallisuuskatsaus päätetään kahden case-tutkimuksen analyysillä. Ensimmäisessä tutkimuksessa oli suoritettu kustannus-hyötyanalyysi Ilmatieteen laitoksen palveluihin liittyen, ja niiden oli todettu tuovan yhteiskunnalle noin viisinkertaisen hyödyn niiden kustannuksiin nähden. Toinen tutkimus oli käsitellyt kustannus-hyötyanalyysin käyttöä Suomen alueellistamispolitiikassa, ja siinä oli selvinnyt, että virkamiehet olivat soveltaneet kustannus-hyötyanalyysiä väärin tässä tapauksessa. Tutkimusaukko on vahvistettu, sillä kustannus-hyötyanalyysin käytön yleisyydestä julkisessa palvelutuotannossa ei vaikuta olevan mitään kattavaa tutkimusta. Jotkin julkaisut kuitenkin vihjaavat, että se olisi alikäytetty julkisessa päätöksenteossa. Näin ollen on vielä tarvetta lisätutkimukselle sen käytöstä julkisessa palvelutuotannossa

This study’s purpose is to examine academic partnerships between universities in the United Kingdom and Korea. It aims to examine both partnership fundamentals and what leads to a mutually successful partnership. The fundamentals are the why, who and where. It aims to examine partnership formation and the relationships between partners, and the impacts of the partnership on the university. This study uses qualitative interviews mixed with a cost-benefit analysis. The interviews serve two main purposes. The first is to gain a fine-grained analysis of why universities create partnerships and how they go about it. The second is to understand the partnership factors that impact universities. These impact factors are then used to create cost-benefit analyses of three different UK-Korea university partnerships, differentiated by intensity of partnerships, to illustrate the partnerships’ impacts on the individual universities. Through thematic analysis, the qualitative results show that different types of partnerships are created in different parts of the university. The central offices create development co-operation and exchange partnerships, whereas the academic units create more exchange and commercial trade partnerships. However, in each of these partnerships, funding and international rankings are key motivations. The cost-benefit analysis shows that partnerships are beneficial to universities with commercial trade partnerships the most beneficial. The implications are that the academic units should work to create academic partnerships, with the central office helping in terms of standardisation and with the pastoral aspects of student services.

Cost-benefit analysis plays a significant role in the process of siting hazardous waste facilities throughout the United States. Controversy regarding definitively disparate, albeit unintentional, racist practices in reaching these siting decisions abounds, yet cost-benefit analysis stands incapable of commenting on normative topics. This thesis traces the developments of both cost-benefit analysis and its normative cousin utilitarianism by focusing on the impacts they have had on the contemporary environmental justice discourse and highlighting valid claims, misunderstandings, and sedimented ideas surrounding the popularity of cost-benefit analysis. This analysis ultimately leads to an alternative means of realizing environmental justice that both acknowledges the need for greater democratic interactions and attempts to work with, rather than against, the prevailing paradigm of reaching siting decisions.

The goal of the diploma thesis Evaluation of the effectiveness of public projects Cost Benefit Analysis is an application of obtained theoretical knowledge from analysis of costs and benefits on specific public project the construction of water supply and sewerage system in the city Kamenice. The introduction of the theoretical part begins with the definition of public sector, public finance, public project and describes methods of evaluation of public projects. In the next chapter of the theoretical part is dedicated in detail process of Cost Benefit Analysis. The practical part of thesis is about applying Cost Benefit analysis on a specific project from area of environment Kamenice: Water supply and sewerage system. On this real project will be analyzed the costs and benefits and after this analyse it will be possible to say if applicant held a methodology of CBA and if project is beneficial for public. The methods used in developing the topic of this diploma thesis is a literary review, descriptions, analysis, interviews, results of empirical investigations and an imperical synthesis of learned facts.

This thesis is concerned with addressing the cost analysis challenges in vertically separated railways. Both the challenges in infrastructure management and passenger railway operations are considered. A hedonic cost function is applied to better incorporate measures of heterogeneity of output into passenger train operation cost analysis. This allows for a richer understanding of the cost structure of the industry, through explicitly making scale economies a function of output heterogeneity, which in turn allows for tenders to be specified in a cost minimising manner. Three example tender re-mappings are considered for Britain. It is estimated that two out of three actually increase costs, reflecting that the model implies that for very heterogeneous TOCs, returns to density can not be exploited. In addition, the thesis details methodological work in developing analytical frameworks to exploit a multi layer panel dataset comprising observations on regions of many individual infrastructure managers. As well as providing extra observations to estimate cost frontiers, the data structure permits estimation of a dual-level inefficiency model which separates sub-company persistent inefficiency from subcompany varying inefficiency. This decomposition gives an indication as to whether inefficiency predominantly varies within firm or between firms. The example shows statistically significant inefficiency variation at both levels, and importantly, failure to take into account the dual-level nature of inefficiency is shown to under predict inefficiency. The thesis also develops new techniques to quantify uncertainty in inefficiency predictions from stochastic frontier models. This has application across the applied efficiency analysis discipline and not just in railways. Overall, this thesis finds that robust cost and efficiency analysis can only be conducted through explicit allowance for heterogeneity in output (both observed and unobserved), ensuring sufficient data quantity and that data relates to the organisational level to which decisions are made and that, in any analysis, the impact of uncertainty is quantified.

In vitro fertilization (IVF) is used to help infertile couples achieve a live birth. Clinical studies have suggested that multiple, consecutive cycles of IVF can increase live birth rate significantly. Others have documented improved live birth rates from the use of new laboratory techniques for preimplantation genetic screening (PGS). This genetic screening technique seeks to determine the ploidy of the embryo prior to implantation into the woman. To date, no study has examined the cost-effectiveness of using IVF in conjunction with PGS compared to that of IVF alone for 3 consecutive cycles in achieving a live birth. This study compared the incremental cost-effectiveness ratios (ICER) from each intervention arm based on the clinical probabilities for each outcome and this study was grounded in the protection motivation theory. Costs were obtained from secondary sources, such as the literature and government databases. The model was constructed using a decision-analytical approach that allowed for z test statistical analysis of the outcomes, where the ICER is the dependent variable and the independent variables are the 2 interventions. The robustness of the model was tested through univariate and probabilistic sensitivity analysis and stratified by age groups. The results showed that PGS with IVF was cost-effective for women aged under 40 and women aged 40-42, but not for women over 42. Based on a willingness-to-pay threshold of $100,000, IVF with PGS was the most cost-effective strategy in all age groups. The positive social change implication of this study is such that understanding the costs associated with a new technology to achieve a live birth is significant for society to help guide clinical treatment of these patients.

The present Work Project is integrated into a project that is being developed for the IES - Social Entrepreneurship Institution, as a first step in a larger project named "One.Cost." This first step intends to identify the typologies that exist of social problems, involving social entrepreneurship and analyze methodologies that estimate the cost per unit in the area of education. As a second objective, it is also useful for any social organization that intends to measure its impacts on the cost-effectiveness and cost-effectiveness methodologies in Education area in Portugal.

碩士
亞洲大學
長期照護研究所
94
Due to population aging, the increase of long-term care demands and the idea of “aging in place”, the demands for home care grows rapidly. Thus, the reasonable valuation of home care became the important issue. This research tried to use the idea of Activity-based Costing to explore the principal cost factors of home care, calculate the cost of home care and compare the the difference between the cities and countries. The research targets referred to 15 home care service centers in Taichung City and Changhua County. There were 15 questionnaries distributed and 10 returned. The return rate was 66.67 %. Among 10 home care service centers receiving the survey of this research, five of them were in urban area and the other five were in countryside (50%, 50%). As to the research tools, the researchers managed the structural questionnaire to collect the data, including two sections. The first section was “survey of resource costs in home care service center” which collected the cost data in the home care service center; the second part was “survey of resource consumption of home care activities” which collected the resource consumption situation of 115 service cases in home care service centers receiving the survey. The content of the investigation mainly treated 6 home care services (household work service, document service, recreational service, medical service, physical care service and other service) as the cost objects and investigate the data of the related cost factors. The researcher further used descriptive statistics, t-test and One-way ANOVA for data analysis. The research showed that age was unrelated to the cost objects such as household work service, physical care service, document service, recreational service, medical service and blood pressure measurement; the higher the disabled degree was, the higher the household work service cost was; the more the diseases were, the higher the physical care service cost was; the more the disabled items of IADLs and ADLs were, the higher the costs of household work service and physical care service were. The research used the independent sample t to test the difference between urban service center and country home care service center in terms of cost drivers and cost objects; the statistical result found out that the office cost in urban area was higher than that in the country area; the household work service cost, document service cost, recreational service cost, medical service cost physical care service cost and other cost (blood pressure measurement) in urban area were more than those in country area. The samples in this research only included 10 home care service centers and the home care cost literatures published in the past applied Activity-based Costing by case study. Thus, the result of this research was regarded as the initial step. We expect that this research can function as the reference for the managers in home care service centers when controlling the cost and for future long-term care financial planning.

BACKGROUND: The World Health Organization (WHO) has acknowledged the importance of maternal care and listed it as part of its Millennium Development goals (WHO, 2002). The Maternity unit of the Job Shimankana Tabane (JST) Hospital, situated in the Rustenburg city (regarded as the fastest growing city within South Africa) is burdened with increasing number of patients for the last few years with resultant increased resource utilisation. However, there is no systematic study done to describe this situation. The above mentioned scenario necessitates this study to assess the operational cost of the Obstetrics Unit in relation to caseload, profile of patients, and resource utilization. AIM: To determine the operational costs within the Obstetrics Unit of the JST Hospital in terms of caseload, profile of patients, and resource utilization METHODOLOGY: Cross sectional study design was used for this study. Retrospective record review was done and information extracted from various sources of hospital information system. No primary data was collected for this study. Setting of this study was the Obstetrics unit at Job Shimankana Tabane Hospital situated within Rustenburg city of Bojanala District in North West Province. Data was collected on various variables that are relevant to the function of women health services and resource utilization in Obstetrics unit of this Hospital. Results: Obstetric unit of Job Shimankana hospital experienced high caseload due to patient bypassing primary health care service points including district hospitals with highest number being seen afterhours; and due to inappropriate referrals from clinics. Analysis of profile of these patients showed 93% being Africans, 90% unemployed; and 70% being single. Hospital obstetric unit operational costs amount to just over R1.3 million with 57% accounted for by goods and services and human resource accounting for the remaining 43%. The average was R7, 717.75, which is very high. Conclusion: The operational cost of this obstetric unit was found to be very high and quality may have been compromised due to increased caseload, leading to low length of stay.

碩士
臺中健康暨管理學院
健康管理研究所
91
The standard cost for nursing home care has often been debated since the current nursing homes in Taiwan haven’t developed a complete accounting and cost analysis system. This research is a case study on cost analysis for a hospital-based nursing home. According to the degree of care resource utilization, disability, and health condition, of the resident, to calculate the effect it has in the cost of care in nursing home. The research estimates the care time and cost by utilizing the framework of Activity-Based Cost (ABC) approach. Furthermore, this study analyzes the nursing home care cost and develops the case-mix system. The result shows that the care time varies because of the resident’s functional status and tube numbers. Also, the more care time the higher care cost. The case-mix model established in the research, is the optimal model. It is based on the physical status (the Barthel Index) and tub numbers (whether use tubes or not) to group the residents into four groups. The case-mix model could explain 70.2﹪variation of care cost, and it is more practical because the grouping variables are easy to assess, and also to derive from medical record. The result of this research concludes that the ABC approach could be utilized in analyzing the nursing home care cost and arranging for the human resource. In addition, through the case-mix system, it could develop the cost standards as well as the estimate the operating cost.

碩士
國立交通大學
管理學院工業工程與管理學程
100
Non-productive wafer expenditure plays an important role for material cost in semi-conductor plant . It is composed of 2 sources - brand new dummy wafer and reclaim wafer . brand new dummy wafer is raw wafer which is not used ever by production line . When brand new dummy wafer is used in production line for several times , the condition for it will become worse and can not conform with criterion for re-use . Then , it will be sent to reclaiming process for wafer surface treatment ,called reclaim process .Most of semi-conductor plants outsource this process to third party called reclaim house .After reclaiming of non-productive wafer , it will be able to reuse in production line with the same quality as brand new dummy wafer . More non-productive wafers successfully reclaimed from reclaim house will reduce usage cost of brand new dummy wafer . Hence,performance for reclaim house will be key factor to influence the expenditure of whole non-productive wafer expenditure ,because good performance reclaim house will create cost benefit to whole non-productive wafer cost and reduce cost of non-productive wafer . In light of lack of an effective cost estimation model for a specific reclaim house of the surveyed semi-conductor plant to determine whether this reclaim house provides a lower cost reclaim operation than others, this study intends to develop a simple and effective method to estimate the whole cost incurred by operations of a reclaim house instead of only using purchase cost to judge a reclaim house's cost performance .This model includes purchase cost , shortage cost ,inventory-holding cost and transportation cost to estimate how much a reclaim house costs for its reclaim procedure. The basis for this model is historical data collected from ERP system, Enterprise resource planning system .The result of this study shows this cost estimation model effective to reduce the whole non-productive cost. Thus ,it can serve a method for a purchaser or material supply planner to estimate a reclaim house with a real lower cost for its reclaiming operations.