Economics

FlowState estimates capital investment, operating cost and profitability from the equipment sizes, material and utility consumption, labour and the schedule. The results update on every edit and appear on the Economics tab.

The “Evaluate economics” switch

Each process has its own switch. Open Tasks ▸ Economic parameters… (or $ Economics on the toolbar). The first checkbox is:

Evaluate economics (capital, operating cost, profitability)

Turn it off for models without cost data. Material and energy balances, scheduling and environmental results are unaffected. With evaluation off:

• the Economics tab shows Cost evaluation is off for this process with a Turn on cost evaluation button;
• the status bar and the process overview hide the unit cost and NPV;
• reports leave out cost figures rather than printing meaningless ones.

Evaluation is on for new processes and off for files imported from .spf projects, whose cost data FlowState does not read (see Importing .spf project files). It is also off for the starch and sweetener examples, which were built from such files. To evaluate costs, enter equipment costs, prices and economic parameters, then turn evaluation on.

Economic parameters

The Economic Parameters window groups the inputs as follows.

Restore defaults resets the factors. Sections can override plant-wide factors with Own cost factors in the Process Settings window.

The default factors are generic order-of-magnitude values. FlowState’s equipment cost models are its own power-law correlations, so for a serious estimate enter vendor quotes or your own base costs in each procedure’s Equipment ▸ Cost model, or set the DFC directly.

Reading the Economics tab

• KPI cards: total capital investment, operating cost, revenues, unit production cost, gross margin, return on investment, payback time, and NPV at the first discount rate with the IRR.
• Direct fixed capital breakdown, Annual operating cost (donut), and Cash flow (net, cumulative and discounted cumulative, by project year).
• Capital investment and Profitability tables.
• Sections: equipment purchase cost, DFC, and facility, labour, materials and utilities cost per section.
• Cash-flow analysis: IRR before and after tax, and a year-by-year table of capacity, investment, debt, revenue, operating cost, depreciation, interest, loan payments, taxes and net cash flow.
• Minimum selling price, Net operating cost and Net unit production cost (after credits).
• Cards for Consumables, Credits, Labor by category & operation with QC, Hybrid operation & single-use, and Raw materials & revenues.

Consumables

Membranes, cartridges, resins, carbon, bags and catalysts are managed in Tasks ▸ Consumables library… (also a button on the Economics tab). The Consumables Library lists each item’s id, name, kind, price, price basis, replacement interval and initial charge (which can be capitalised). Procedures reference items by id with a quantity, set in the Inspector under Consumables, labor & hybrid operation. Annual cost = price × quantity × replacements per year; the Annual cost by use section shows where the money goes.

Single-use procedures (Single-use in the same Inspector section) skip CIP/SIP, carry hardware-only capital and add a bag cost per batch.

Minimum selling price (MSP)

In Economic parameters ▸ Unit cost basis, escalation & minimum selling price:

• Minimum selling price: tick Solve, and choose the target: NPV = 0 at discount rate 1 (default) or Target IRR (default 15 %).
• Also report per: kg only, dose, litre or a custom unit, for example to give the cost per dose of a vaccine.
• Revenue escalation and Cost escalation over the project life.

The result appears as the Minimum selling price card on the Economics tab.

Tornado, scenarios and scale-up

Open Tasks ▸ Scenarios, tornado & scale-up… (or the button on the Economics tab).

Tornado (one-at-a-time sensitivity)

1. Add variables with + variable (a variable path such as components/Glucose/price) or + common prices.
2. Set the − % and + % change for each (10 % by default).
3. Click ▶ Run tornado. Bars show the effect on NPV, or on the unit cost with Show unit cost instead of NPV.

Scenarios (named variable overrides)

1. Click + scenario, give it a name, and add overrides with + override (a path and a value).
2. Click ▶ Compare. A table compares the base case and each scenario: total capital investment, operating cost, revenues, credits, unit production cost, net unit production cost, NPV, IRR, minimum selling price and main-product output, with an NPV bar chart.

Variable paths are the same ones used by flowstate-cli get/set and the automation API; see Command line and automation API.

Throughput scale-up

Enter a target annual output of the main product and click Scale feeds to target. All feeds are scaled and equipment in Design mode re-sizes.

Sweeps and Monte Carlo

For parameter sweeps and Monte Carlo uncertainty studies, use flowstate-cli sweep and flowstate-cli monte-carlo; see Command line and automation API.