What a Colour Costs Before Any Cloth Is Dyed, and the Lot That Absorbs It

How to read this sheet

The changeover is charged once per colour, which assumes each colour runs as one lot. A colour split across two deliveries pays it twice and this sheet will understate its cost; where the plan is known, enter the colour twice at its split weights. Nothing here models sequencing - a dyehouse that runs the range light to dark pays far less in cleaning than one that does not, and that saving belongs to the planner rather than to the colour. Lab dips are counted per colour as submitted, including the ones that failed, because a rejected dip costs what an accepted one costs; counting only approved dips is the commonest way this exercise flatters itself. The break-even lot is a contribution break-even and takes no view on capacity: filling a machine with a marginal colour to reach it can still be the wrong decision if the same hours would have run a profitable one, which is a question for the order-acceptance sheet rather than this one. Recipe cost is dye and chemicals only - if steam, labour and effluent are already in your per-kilogram conversion cost, add them there and not here, or they are counted twice. Finally, a colour below water is not automatically a colour to refuse: a range is often bought whole, and the small fashion shades are frequently why the buyer came.