There are two methods for evaluating two or more mutually exclusive projects. One is a total investment approach and the other is an incremental investment approach. The former can rank projects by the criterion of the net present value, but the latter can’t do it. An incremental investment approach is only possible when all pairwise alternatives are compared. Thus an incremental investment approach is superior in ranking them over an incremental investment approach. To do so, a principle of comparison must be established. Comparisons of profitability are reasonable when operating the same amount of investment over the same period of time. One principle is that all projects are invested in the largest of the projects. Another principle is that all projects are invested during the longest project life of the projects. In this paper, even if the principle is followed, it will be shown that the external rate of return fails to rank them. However, the productive rate of return criterion would prove to be able to rank them like the net present value standard, provided that the principle of comparison is kept. In addition, rate of returns can be assessed so that all mutually exclusive projects can be compared at once, such as on the criterion of the net present value. That is, it can be also compared with many other returns, such as the profit rates on financial investments or real investments.

The IRR (internal rate of return) is often used by investors for the evaluation of engineering projects. Unfortunately, it is widely known that it has serial flaws. Also, External rate of returns (ERRs) such as ARR (Average Rate of Return) or MIRR (MIRR, Modified Internal Rate of Return) do not differentiate between the real investment and the expenditure. The PRR (Productive rate of return) is faithful to the conception of the return on investment. The PRR uses the effective investment instead of the initial investment. In this paper, we examined two cases of the engineering project. the one is a traditional engineering project with financing activity, another is the project with R&D. Although the IRR has only one value, it overestimates or underestimate profitabilities of Engineering Projects. The ARR and the MARR assume that a returned cash reinvest other projects or assets instead of the project currently executing. Thus they are only one value of a project’s profitability, unlike the IRR. But the ARR does not classify into the effective investment and non-investment expenditure. It only accepts an initial expenditure as for an investment. The MIRR also fails to classify into the investment and the expenditure. It has an error of making a loss down as the investment. The IRR works as efficiently as a NPW (Net Present Worth). It clearly expresses a rate of return in respect of an investment in an engineering project with a loan. And it shows its ability in an engineering project with a R&D investment.

The IRR(internal rate of return) is often used by investors for the evaluation of engineering projects. Unfortunately, it has serial flaws: (1) multiple real-valued IRRs may arise; (2) complex-valued IRRs may arise; (3) the IRR is, in special cases, incompatible with the net present value (NPV) in accept/reject decisions. The efforts of management scientists and economists in providing a reliable project rate of return have generated over the decades an immense amount of contributions aiming to solve these shortcomings. Especially, multiple internal rate of returns (IRRs) have a fatal flaw when we decide to accep it or not. To solve it, some researchers came up with external rate of returns (ERRs) such as ARR (Average Rate of Return) or MIRR (MIRR, Modified Internal Rate of Return). ARR or MIRR. will also always yield the same decision for a engineering project consistent with the NPV criterion. The ERRs are to modify the procedure for computing the rate of return by making explicit and consistent assumptions about the interest rate at which intermediate receipts from projects may be invested. This reinvestment could be either in other projects or in the outside market. However, when we use traditional ERRs, a volume of capital investment is still unclear. Alternatively, the productive rate of return (PRR) can settle these problems. Generally, a rate of return is a profit on an investment over a period of time, expressed as a proportion of the original investment. The time period is typically the life of a project. The PRR is based on the full life of the engineering project. but has been annualised to project one year. And the PRR uses the effective investment instead of the original investment. This method requires that the cash flow of an engineering project must be separated into ‘investment’ and ‘loss’ to calculate the PRR value. In this paper, we proposed a tabulated form for easy calculation of the PRR by modifing the profit and loss statement, and the cash flow statement.

실물투자수익률 계산의 번거로움을 없애고 정확한 수익률을 구하기 위해서 투자사업에서 투자금과 수익금을 분리해야 한다. 투자 사업의 순현금흐름을 투자활동 현금흐름과 비투자활동 현금흐름을 분리하여 구할 수 있도록 현금흐름표를 변경하였다.

When multiple rates of return occur, none of them is an accurate portrayal of project acceptability or profitability For the simple investment situation, it was known that the IRR can serve as an appropriate index for either accepting or rejecting the inv

  The reinvestment assumption of the internal rate of return(IRR) method may not be valid in an engineering economy study. This situation, coupled with the computational demands and possible multiple interest rate associated with the IRR method, has given