Determining the Duration of R&D Processes through Monte Carlo Simulation

The research and development (R&D) processes influence the economic development of a company, because in an industry that is changing fast, firms must continually revise their projects and range of products. Therefore in order to determine the specific costs of research and development activity we have to highlight the efforts and effects of these activities and to calculate some indicators of economic efficiency. In the cost calculation process in R & D we have emphasized the identification of the components of cost and the duration of the R & D processes, as a component of the R&D cost, that is why as a new method we used Monte Carlo simulation. The novelty of the paper is that it focuses on determining components of cost and the duration of the R & D processes in its cost calculation procedure. The originality of this work is the use of Monte Carlo simulation to determine the average length of producing a new product

Model of indirect Expenses Distribution for Determining Economies of Scale

Changing economic environment, innovative production technologies and the need to obtain relevant information in decisionmaking, management determines the organizations to seek different approaches to identify economies of scale. Economies of scale are manifested as an effect of cost reduction. The article proposes a comparative analysis of two methods of establishing costs that allow the identification and quantification of economies of scale. The research proposes a distribution of indirect costs depending on the cause-effect relationship between activity and product. The research results show a cost difference in the case of implementing the Activity-based costing (ABC) cost system, thus recognizing the usefulness and compatibility of the method

MQL-Assisted Hard Turning of AISI D2 Steel with Corn Oil: Analysis of Surface Roughness, Tool Wear, and Manufacturing Costs

Precision hard turning (HT) gained more and more attention in the cutting industry in the last years due to continuous pressure of the global market for reducing costs, minimizing the environmental and health issues, and achieving a cleaner production. Therefore, dry cutting and minimal quantity lubrication (MQL) became widely used in manufacturing to meet the environmental issues with respect to harmful cutting fluids (CFs). Vegetable oils, in MQL machining, are a promising solutions to petroleum-based CFs; however, the effects and performance on surface roughness and tool wear in HT with ceramic inserts remain unclear. To address this limitation, hardened AIDI D2 steel and pure corn oil, rich in saturated and monounsaturated fatty acids, cheap and widely available, have been used to conduct dry and MQL experiments at different cutting speed and feeds. Results show that corn oil is suitable as cutting lubricant in HT, creating a strong anti-wear and anti-friction lubricating film which improves the roughness with 10–15% and tool life with 15–20%, therefore reducing costs. Best surface roughness values (Ra = 0.151 μm, Rz = 0.887 μm, Rpk = 0.261 μm) were obtained at 180 m/min and 0.1 mm/rev. The analysis of variance shows that corn oil has statistical significance on roughness, validating the results