Thesis (M.S.)--University of Florida, 2005. / Title from title page of source document. Document formatted into pages; contains 70 pages. Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Activity-based costing (ABC) is a forward-looking product costing method. Unlike traditional volume-based approaches, which are historically oriented, ABC concepts guide managers in seeking the best strategies to pursue in the future. This product costing method can be a valuable tool in planning and managing costs not only in the manufacturing area, but also in all aspects of business operations, from product design to distribution. Although its main advantage is its ability to provide more realistic product cost information for financial reporting purposes, use of ABC can lead to a better understanding of the strategic linkages existing between the various cost areas in the organisation. It enables managers to have a holistic view of cost management. ABC was developed to better understand, manage and control the overheads. The brief fundamental of ABC is: Products consume activities, activities consume resources, and resources consume costs. Based upon this fundamental principle, ABC can trace the cost from resources to activities that are consumed by product manufacturing processes as well as from activities to products. ABC investigates the transactions that trigger cost instead of concentrating solely on measures of physical volume or a certain amount of labour hours. Compared to the traditional costing systems, ABC can not only answer how much product cost is but also tell executives the factors triggering costs and the way to manage costs. ABC helps managers make better decisions about product design, pricing, marketing, and mix and encourages continual improvement. Unlike the traditional method, instead of using the single pre-determined overhead rate to absorb the indirect cost to products, ABC uses actual incurred cost to v determine the product cost. By tracing the absorption process of indirect cost, ABC would provide more information to management and help it find better ways to manage costs. However, the cost drivers used in ABC are constants but the cost driver rates are continually changing. ABC still uses predetermined cost drivers so it has the same fundamental problem as the traditional methods for estimating.

The application of product families and platforms has gained attention as a promising approach to achieving organizational objectives that provide customers with mass customized products while allowing for significant savings from commonality and reuse strategies. While the single-platform strategy has been widely studied, it may lead to the over expansion of the product family. Designers have to either continuously extend the exiting platform and/or impose strict constraints on new variants in order that there is a fit. On the one hand, continuously “extending“ or “'stretching“ the platform forces the platform to become overburdened and less efficient. On the other hand, imposing strict constraints on new variants will force new variants to compromise performances. In this research, the concept of a multi-platform strategy has been put forward to reduce or eliminate negative effects of the single-platform strategy by coordinating products in a complex product family into two or more platforms to provide enough product variety as well as commonality. The method is developed by adopting and synthesizing various tools and concepts from different research areas, such as design management tools, clustering analysis, statistics, decision analysis, mathematical programming, and engineering costing. The product assets that can be shared by the products are determined through product asset value analysis and redesign effort analysis. The number of platforms is flexibly determined by a hierarchical clustering method based on product similarity/dissimilarity. The product-platform assignment problem is simultaneously solved during the clustering process. A multi-objective optimization model is formulated to determine the design specifications and address the product positioning. A Consistent Aggregate Function Formation Method (CAF2M) is put forward to convert the multi-objective optimization model into a single-dimension problem that can quantitatively balance the tradeoff among the multiple objectives. To evaluate the economic benefit from the platform-based product development, an adjusted Activity-Based Costing approach is utilized to identify the cost savings with the consideration of learning effects. A case application with seven automobile models is utilized to illustrate the proposed multi-platform strategy. The method was found helpful for determining and integrating critical design information into the design of product families and platforms. / Ph. D.

Rising demands and market competition have forced many emergency departments to improve their quality of service. This improvement is usually achieved at the cost of increasing resources in the emergency department in order to increase the patient satisfaction. This research deals in part with both problems, i.e., increasing patient satisfaction and keeping costs in the ED to a minimum. The research has schedules designed on the patient contacts for physicians and residents in the academic emergency department at York hospital such that the resource costs and patient waiting costs are kept at a minimum. The emergency department is simulated using Arena 7.0 and the minimum cost objective is achieved by running OptQuest for Arena to get the near optimal number of staff working the designed schedules in order to achieve the objective. Efficiently scheduling doctors and residents resulted in waiting cost reductions of almost 80%. There was also an increase in patient satisfaction, considering the time taken by patients to see a doctor or resident for the first time. The time was reduced by 33% for critical patients and was reduced by almost 29% for intermediate care patients with the schedules designed herein. / Master of Science

This thesis is designed to emphasize and illustrate that marginal costing is a tool of management that can make clear the how, when, why, and wherefor of the price determining affect and its results.

This dissertation is focused on management of costing in connection with calculation output with emphasis to specific industial firm. First part describes calculations based on theoretical aspect. Second part is focused on theoretical knowledges of the analysis of costing system of company Alika, a.s. This part finally valorize the costing system of the company warning for its disadvantages and subsequent processing of the proposed modifications for a calculation output. My goal is to offer them a calculation formula, which can be used for solving decision tasks, that are important for them.

The aim of the thesis Management costing and information assurance (on example of concrete company) is to evaluate the calculation formula and the calculation system of the selected company and to propose suggestions for improvements. The theoretical part is devoted mainly to well-known methods and principles of calculations. The practival part is devoted directly to Zentiva, k.s. and its particular calculation formula and calculation system. Costing principles are evaluated and suggestions are designed to improve the whole system.

This master’s thesis is focused on costing of company Jihlavan a.s. It consists from two main parts: theoretical base and analysis of current company situation. There are explained terms of cost and costing in the first part and system of creating of company costing in the second part. There are recommendations for quality improvement on base of performed analysis in last part of this thesis.

The aim of this diploma thesis is to analyse the costing system of the selected agricultural enterprise. The thesis is divided into two parts, theoretical and practical. The theoretical section deals with the explanation of basic concepts: accounting subsystems, costs and costing. In the practical part the analysis of company costing system is implemented, final costing is compared with preliminary costing and compounded production costing is created. The biggest differences are shown in rye costs per hectare and in colza costs per quintal. After considering all advantages and disadvantages, the most appropriate method for the compounded production costing, is the split-off method. In addition to that, the thesis deals with the characteristics of the company, its economic situation and its organizational structure and describes the company accounting system.

Titel: Kostnadskalkylering för lean-företag – En systematisk litteraturstudie Författare: Max Börjesson Handledare: Helena Forslund Examinator: Elin Funck Lärosäte: Ekonomihögskolan vid Linnéuniversitetet i Växjö Kurs: Examensarbete i controller för Civilekonomprogrammet Nyckelord: lean, kostnadskalkylering, standardkostnader, activity based costing, ABC, value stream costing, VSC. Bakgrund och problemformulering: lean är en filosofi som fått stort genomslag. Samtidigt kräver användandet av filosofin anpassningar, bland annat i företags kostnadskalkylering. I den befintliga forskningen är det inte tydligt vilken forskning som faktiskt passar bäst för företag som använder lean. Syfte: Syftet med studien är att kartlägga forskningen om kostnadskalkylering tillsammans med lean, samt utreda vilket av verktygen för kostnadskalkylering som passar bäst för företag som använder lean. De verktygen som undersöks är standardkostnader, ABC och VSC. Metod: metoden är baserad på en systematisk litteraturstudie, kompletterat med ett teorikapitel. Slutsats: studien visar att kostnadskalkylering för lean-företag är ett område som fått ett ökat intresse sedan år 2002. Den identifierade litteraturen kommer framförallt från Europa och Nordamerika. Standardkostnader används ofta som en jämförelse till andra verktyg, medan activity based costing och value stream costing ofta har en mer central roll i studier. I studien har få fördelar med standardkostnader identifierats. Både activity based costing och value stream costing framstår som lämpliga, utifrån den litteraturen som finns idag. / Title: Lean Cost Accounting – A Systematic Literature Review Author: Max Börjesson Tutor: Helena Forslund Examiner: Elin Funck Institution: School of Business and Economics, Linnaeus University, Växjö Course: Degree Project in Controlling, The Business Administration and Economics Programme, 4FE18E. Keywords: lean, cost accounting, standard costing, activity based costing, ABC, value stream costing, VSC. Background and problem discussion: the interest for lean has been great. Implementation of lean requires companies to make adoptions. One of the adoptions that needs to made is in the cost accounting. The current literature has not identified what the best method for lean companies is. Purpose: the purpose of this study is to identify the existing research about cost accounting for lean companies, and to examine the method that fits lean companies the best. The tools used are standard costing, activity based costing and value stream costing. Method: A systematic literature review is used in this study. Conclusion: This study shows that the interest for cost accounting for lean companies has developed since 2002. The identified literature is primarily from Europe and North America. Standard costing is often used for comparisons with other tools. Activity based costing and value stream costing have a more central role in studies when they are used. This study has not identified any benefits of using standard costing, while both activity based costing and value stream costing seem to be useful.