Can someone put into words what a production cost report is and why it is broken out into 4 steps?

The "4 steps" could very easily just be how some book decided to divide it. And lots of cost accounting reports can contain whatever management decides it should contain. And therefore, the author of a book can also decide it contains whatever s/he wants it to.

But I can give you some generic information. Production costs are those that are going into producing the produce, not including selling and admin costs. They consist of direct materials, direct labor and overhead. So all of those numbers would have to be on the report somewhere. Also, the report could include all of the production costs for a month (year), or could only include costs that went into a finished product. I would call the latter a cost of goods manufactured report, but again, "production cost report" is such a generic name that they could mean anything. It might contain beginning and ending balances in the production account (work in process, or some such name).

What all information it contains and the format of how to set it up (including those 4 steps) is all very book-dependent. If you have an example, or the book lists those 4 steps, I can maybe figure out what they mean. But I have a feeling the 4 steps are also generic.

(Just as example of what I mean by generic... let's say I'm baking a cake. One person could call this 2 steps: mixing ingredients & pouring into pan, and baking. Another person could call this 5 steps: mix the dry ingredients, mix the wet ingredients, add the dry to the wet, pour it into a pan, bake it. So, is baking a cake 2 steps or 5 steps? Depends on who you ask.)