Three bids arrive for a 90-bed continuing care contract. Bid A is 6.40 pounds per kilo and states a dose of 10 g. Bid B is 5.10 per kilo and states a dose of 16 g. Bid C is 7.80 per kilo and supplies 8 g sachets. On the headline price B looks 20 per cent cheaper. On cost per occupied bed-day, B is t…
Three quotes land on the same desk in the same week. A 25 kg sack of gel powder at 7.20 pounds a kilo. A gel cartridge system at 0.85 pounds per cartridge plus a holder at 34 pounds. And absorbent pads at 0.28 pounds each, four to five a day. The unit has 35 beds at 94 per cent occupancy. The purcha…
A purchaser in Guangzhou compared two suppliers on price and chose the one at 1,980 dollars a tonne over the one at 2,090. Eighteen months later, an audit of the receiving records showed the winning supplier averaged 7.9 percent volatile content against 2.8 percent for the other. On 240 tonnes a yea…
Two quotes arrive on the same day. One is 2,080 dollars a tonne for a 30/60 mesh grade at 305 g/g in deionised water. The other is 2,410 dollars a tonne for a 20/40 mesh grade at 280 g/g. The instinct is to take the cheaper one. Run the numbers on the stream you actually have, and the expensive quot…
A hygiene convertor in Southeast Asia opened a 1,000 kg bulk bag and found 38 kg of it would pass a 150 micron screen. Nobody had asked for a fines limit in the purchase order, because nobody had thought fines were a specification. Six months later the converting line was running 4 percent slower, t…
A city of 210,000 is moving to weekly separated food waste collection: 55,000 households, a 23-litre kitchen caddy each, 240-litre kerbside bins, and a transfer station 14 kilometres out. The business case assumes 28 percent capture in year one. What the council has not yet modelled is what a 240-li…
A 200-cover restaurant sends out nine 120-litre bins a week, averaging 55 kilos each. That is 495 kilos a week, 25.7 tonnes a year. On a landfill levy of 110 dollars a tonne, a gate fee of 85 and a haul charge of 42 dollars a lift, the annual waste bill comes to about 12,600 dollars. Add two rejecte…
Two quotations land on the buyer’s desk. Option A is 0.28 per pad with three changes per tray per shift. Option B is 0.52 per pad with two changes. The buyer compares 0.28 with 0.52 and orders A, saving 46 percent per unit. On 40 trays a shift, three shifts a day, 300 days a year, option A cos…
A 120-bed care home on a normal night shift produces something close to 90 to 110 used incontinence pads, plus commode and urinal empties. If those are still being decanted into lined bins and wheeled to a service lift, the question is not whether you need a gelling agent. It is which one still work…
