Patent ID: 8260623

Claim:
A method of selecting between treated flour and untreated flour, comprising: providing a microprocessor programmed to determine a customer margin differential (“CMD”); determined the CMD by the microprocessor by: (a) determining a cost (“C 1 ”) of untreated flour, which is equal to C.f.×W.f., where C.f. is the cost of untreated flour per unit weight, and W.f. is the weight of untreated flour per unit of final product; (b) determining a cost (“C 2 ”) of treated flour, which is equal to C.t.f.×W.t.f., where C.t.f. is the cost of treated flour per unit weight, and W.t.f. is the weight of treated flour per unit of final product; (c) determining a cost differential (“C 3 ”) of other components, which is equal to the cost of non-flour components used to make the final product when untreated flour is used minus the cost of non-flour components used to make the final product when treated flour is used; (d) determining a cost differential (“C 4 ”) of processing costs, which is equal to the manufacturing cost of producing the final product with untreated flour minus the cost of producing the final product with treated flour; (e) determining the CMD, which is equal to C 1 −C 2 +C 3 +C 4 ; determining whether the CMD is a positive number or not a positive number; indicating selection of treated flour when it is determined that the CMD is a positive number.