THE HEURISTIC VALUE OF "THE BREAK-EVEN POINT" IN MANAGEMENT DECISIONS IN METALLURGICAL INDUSTRY

The market economy claims the existence of an elastic, operative and prompt management. Those mentioned above attributes presume the existence of some adequate instruments. One of these instruments is constituted by the break-even point that may be approached in a double sense: theoretically and practically as well. The level of the products costs and the profitability rate are in a close connection with the relation between the sold quantities and the expenses occasioned by the manufacturing process. The break-even point mark's the activity level for which the entire collect covers the total costs in such a manner that the profit is equivalent to zero. The determination of the break-even point presumes, as a preceding and indispensable step, the grouping of costs by constant and variable. The significance and the importance of the break-even point for an economic agent results from the following reasons: - it is a mean of presenting, in an operative and very suggestive manner, the comparative, temporal and spatial state of the financial health and power: - offers the manager the possibility to analyze and describe the stability of the economic and financial result (the effectiveness): - the point defines an industrial strategy. As an operative method of management the break-even point must be approached by all its complexity. Not always the constant costs are considered to be stable as the practical situation may offer cases when these costs increase significantly and therefore having as an immediate consequence the migration of the break-even point away from the origin, also there may be cases of favorable influences. Consequently, the break-even point does not represent a static concept as it does not exist a balance point but a critic point having a certain horizon of estimation, its determination offering the manager the possibility to adopt operative decisions that may interest both the manufacturing and financial- accounting activity