Like a financial roadmap for the year, a profit plan is a set of goals for revenue, spending and earnings that enables packaging companies to set targets, benchmark progress and ultimately stay on a path to success and increased profits.

“It helps to think of a profit plan as a quotation for a single job the size of an entire year’s volume,” said Ben Markens, TMG president and workshop instructor. “It not only includes every cost and detail summarized on a single sheet of paper, it also guides the company’s progress along several of the most important benchmarks like revenues and recoup of fixed expenses.”

In addition to training in profit planning, workshop attendees will receive a crash course in machine hour rates, which are a per-hour translation of the goals established in the profit plan. Crucial to budgeting and pricing jobs, machine hour rates reveal the true out-of-pocket hourly cost for production centers in a manufacturing facility. They can also help manufacturers determine whether an order is truly profitable and which customers contribute most to the bottom line.

To practice, students will user their new knowledge of profit planning and machine hour rates to solve a variety of complex problems for a fictitious folding carton company. They will determine the company’s true cost of labor, construct its variable and fixed overhead budgets, establish production centers and monitor its profitability.