I have recently updated my “Production for Use” spreadsheet to be (hopefully) a little easier to follow.

I also fixed some errors in some of the equations where I was not distinguishing between the “Production Cost” for items and the “Consumption Cost” for those same items.  These are two different things.

The equation for the “Production Cost” of an item is:

(Labor hours of input materials * subjectively-reported unpleasantness weighting factor of those labor hours spent making the input materials * the factor utilization of those input materials) / the factor utilization of the outputted product.

And the units would be in “modified labor hours.”

Whereas the equation for the “Consumption Cost” of an item is:

((Labor hours of input materials * subjectively-reported unpleasantness weighting factor of those labor hours spent making the input materials * the factor utilization of those input materials) + (Labor hours spent assembling the input materials * subjectively-reported unpleasantness weighting factor of those labor hours spent assembling the input materials)) * the factor utilization of the outputted product.

And the units would once again be in “modified labor hours.”

When to use Production Cost vs. Consumption Cost?

Production cost would be calculated when items are produced, and consumption cost would be calculated when items are consumed.  It’s that simple.  In either case, the relevant participants involved with each would want to make each measure of cost as low as possible, although how they can achieve this varied between the two situations.  (Such as:  if you are producing an item, you want to produce an item with a high factor utilization using inputs with low factor utilizations.  Whereas, if you are consuming an item, you want to consume an item with a low factor utilization that itself was also made from inputs with low factor utilization).

Anyways, here’s the updated Production-for-use-calculator-v2