Commercial Playground Equipment

Playgrounds provide not only recreation and a place for kids to get a fun workout, they also stimulate their imagination, promote agility, dexterity, balance and concentration. But playgrounds need proper equipment to enable children to get the most out of play time.

Commercial playground equipment  is installed in schools, public playgrounds, day care centers and other places where many children gather. There are several things to be considered when selecting commercial playground equipment: the kind of material used, the durability and strength of the material, the number of attachments in the equipment, the safety aspects, the type of activities to be included in the equipment; provision of side amenities like benches, tables, bike racks or litter bins.

A unique feature of commercial playground equipment is that it is made for children of all ages, so it has to be strong and made of durable materials. Commercial playground equipment can also be custom designed to suit specific requirements like adjustable height, attractive colors to choose from, and budgets.

There are questions to ask before installing commercial playground equipment such as: can it accommodate many children at a time? It is durable against rough weather? Is there enough room for the equipment? Is the surface under the equipment safe and resilient? Is there enough space between the pieces of the equipment? Is the equipment suitable for the child? Does it seem risky or unsafe in any way? Are there any objects that are protruding out or those that may cause strangulation or cause the child to trip or fall? Is it easy to maintain? Is it environment friendly? Is there provision for children with special disabilities? Manufacturers are also designing environment friendly equipment to make it more durable as well as ecologically safe. 

Also to be considered are the price, shipping details, assembly instructions and post-sales service. The Internet is a very good source for finding comprehensive information about playground equipment. There are several sites of manufacturers that would help you to locate the best equipment and compare prices.

Some allocation base settled for product costing in ERP

Resource Class	Resource	Cost Component Class	Allocation Basis	Comments
Direct Labor	Labor	Direct Labor	Labor Hrs	-
Labor Overhead	Labor Overhead	Labor Overhead	Labor Hrs	-
Costing Resource	Granulation Costing Resource	Granulation Cost	Machine Hrs	The overheads related to Granulation will be captured based on the ‘Department’ segment in the COA
QAD	QAD	Quality Overhead	Machine Hrs	QAD cost can also be allocated on the basis of Quality hours.
Warehouse Overhead	Warehouse Overhead Resource	Warehouse Overhead	Machine Hrs	The allocation of Warehouse overhead to the product cost will be on the basis of the machine hours
GPO (General Plant Overhead)	GPO Resource	GPO	Machine Hrs	The allocation of Warehouse overhead to the product cost will be on the basis of the machine hours

How overheads will be calculated in ERP implemetation?

Computation of Overheads:

Direct and Indirect overheads are incurred to produce the finished goods from the Raw materials. At MIRACLE Pharma Ltd. we propose to use Resource based absorption.

1.       All the overheads will be modeled as resources and will be absorbed in the product cost on the basis of actual labor hours / machine hours consumed during the production batch. A separate Resource class will be created for each overhead to be consumed.

2.       These Resources will be mapped to every production activity in the routing attached to the recipe.

3.       Resource absorption rate will be computed on the basis of the actual overhead expenses incurred which will be captured in relevant Account balances in Oracle GL module.

4.       The account code combinations will be tagged with the relevant Resource Class. The account balances will be obtained from the Standard Trial Balance report or a custom report can be developed for it.  The account balance to be absorbed can be decided by the Cost Accountant based on the capacity utilization factor of the plant.

5.       The computation of capacity Utilization factor will not be captured in the system.

How costing will be done in Oracle ERP Implementation

Costing at MIRACLE Pharma Ltd.:

The Oracle OPM Cost Management module will be implemented at MIRACLE Pharma Ltd. for Costing of products and valuation of inventory. At MIRACLE Pharma Ltd. the accounting for product Cost will be done as per ‘Actual Costing’ methodology which is a significant change from the Standard costing approach followed so far. The system will account for the costs on the basis of Actual costing whereas Standard costing will be used to generate the variances.

The document presents the features of the Costing solution using OPM Cost Management along with the potential gap areas.

Introduction to OPM Cost Management:

The OPM Cost management module will cater to the following:

·        Product Cost based on actual consumption of ingredients and resources.

·        Batch wise Cost of each product for every manufacturing plant

·        Valuation of FG, RM and WIP inventory.

·        Report on variance between the Standard Product Cost and Actual Product Cost

·        Product Cost as well as Batch Cost will be obtained after every period

OPM Cost management is the central module for computing Product Cost during manufacturing as well as for accounting of all Inventory related transactions including Inventory Issue, Inventory Receipt, Inventory Transfers and Inventory Adjustments. OPM Cost management is integrated with Oracle Inventory, Oracle OPM Product Development and Oracle OPM Process Execution modules.

Few cost accounting issues for Oracle Implementing team

1.     Journalizing

1.1   Journal on Materials, Mfg. Supplies receipts and issues

1.2   Journals on Goods Manufactured and Trading Items

1.3   Journals on Variances and Provisions

1.4   Journals on CIPs

1.5   Journals on Physical Adjustment, Write-off and Revision,

1.6   Journals on Budgeted Overhead

1.7   Reversing and Adjusting Journals

1.8   Journals on VAT deposited and Rebated in different plant manufacturing and purchases

1.9   Journals on Toll and Contract Manufacturing

2.     Product Costing-Latest Actual & Standard

2.1   Module on Costing for Commercial Products

2.2   Module on Costing for Sample Products

2.3   Module on Costing for New Products

2.4   Module on Costing for Products which have common granules

2.5   Module on Costing for Pharma Customized Products-Export

2.6   Module on Costing for Trading Items

2.7   Module on testing export feasibility of a product

2.8   Module on Responsibility Accounting of all responsibility centers

2.9   Module on calculating Cost of Quality including Value Added and Non-Value added activities