Manufacturing Costs

Manufacturing costs are the costs incurred during the production of a product. These costs include the costs of direct material, direct labor, and manufacturing overhead. The costs are typically presented in the income statement as separate line items. An entity incurs these costs during the production process.

Direct material is the materials used in the construction of a product. Direct labor is that portion of the labor cost of the production process that is assigned to a unit of production. Manufacturing overhead costs are applied to units of production based on a variety of possible allocation systems, such as by direct labor hours or machine hours incurred.

Example of Manufacturing Costs

Manufacturing costs are typically divided into three categories:

1. Direct materials cost

The cost of raw materials used in the manufacturing process is one of the most common manufacturing expenses companies measure. You should always strive to deal with vendors to get the lowest possible prices on raw materials, and you should initiate quality control methods to avoid wasting raw materials. Another way raw materials costs can get out of hand is by keeping too much materials inventory. This costs you not only for the cost of the materials themselves, but also for warehousing and tracking them. Review your ordering methods to make sure you keep only the minimum amount of raw materials on hand.

2. Direct labor cost

Paying wages to employees will be one of your major manufacturing expenses. You will need to constantly monitor this cost to make sure you are getting enough production for the money you are putting into labor. Average all the wages of your production crew and calculate how much labor costs you per hour and per day. Here is how to do the calculaton. Add all wages paid in a month and divide by the number of employees. Divide this figure by the number of work days in the month. This is your daily average wage paid. Divide this figure by the number of hours in a shift to get wages paid per hour.

3. Manufacturing overhead

Manufacturing overhead is any manufacturing cost that is neither direct materials cost or direct labor cost. Manufacturing overhead includes all charges that provide support to manufacturing.

Manufacturing overhead includes

• Indirect labor cost: The indirect labor cost is the cost associated with workers, such as supervisors and material handling team, who are not directly involved in the production.
• Indirect materials cost: Indirect materials cost is the cost associated with consumables, such as lubricants, grease, and water, that are not used as raw materials.
• Other indirect manufacturing cost: includes machine depreciation, land rent, property insurance, electricity, freight and transportation, or any expenses that keep the factory operating.

4. Incidental Expenses

In addition to the three most common manufacturing costs, you have expenses for supplies such as tools, tape, lubricants and safety gear. Once you get a handle on your three largest manufacturing expenses, examine your facility to see where else you spend money that goes into your manufacturing costs. One issue you should pay particular attention to is defective products. The costs of manufacturing products that get rejected in quality control can add up quickly.

Production Costs vs. Manufacturing Costs Example

For example, a small business that manufactures widgets may have fixed monthly costs of $800 for its building and $100 for equipment maintenance. These expenses stay the same regardless of the level of production, so per-item costs are reduced if the business makes more widgets.

In this example, the total production costs are $900 per month in fixed expenses plus $10 in variable expenses for each widget produced. To produce each widget, the business must purchase supplies at $10 each. Each widget sells for $100. After subtracting the manufacturing cost of $10, each widget makes $90 for the business.

To break even, the business must produce 10 widgets every month. It must make more than 10 widgets to become profitable.