هزینه یابی یا مدیریت مبتنی بر فعالیت و مفاهیم آن برای مدیریت عملیات

Activity-Based Costing/Management (ABC/M) is an Information System developed in the 1980s to overcome some of the limitations of traditional cost accounting and to enhance its usefulness to strategic decision-making. In this paper, we show how an ABC/M system can serve as a useful information system to support effective operations decision-making processes. We propose a conceptual framework, Operations Hexagon, to discuss the managerial implications of an ABC/M system for various operations management decisions related to product planning and design, quality management and control, inventory management, capacity management and work force management. By viewing an ABC/M system as an enabler to improve the operations decision-making, we demonstrate that these systems enable an operations manager to enhance the quality of the decision-making process.

The present era of global competition, evolving technologies and information systems is leading companies toward a renewed commitment to excellence in manufacturing. Increasing attention to the introduction of new products, the quality of products and processes, the level of inventories, and the improvement of workforce policies have helped companies to become world-class. Accurate cost information is critical for every aspect of a business, from its pricing policies to its product designs and performance reviews. However, most companies are still using the same traditional cost accounting systems that were developed decades ago (Kaplan and Cooper, 1998). For the last two decades, a new type of accounting system, Activity-Based Costing/Management (ABC/M), has been gaining acceptance in the USA as well as in Pacific Rim and European-based companies (Keegan and Eiler, 1994). ABC/M systems represent a shift from a strictly financial perspective to a ‘whole-system’ perspective because they include both financial and non-financial data in its reporting. Rather than just listing cost factors and assigning them to products based on artificial allocations, ABC/M examines processes and work-flows to identify actual activities that add costs. This wider and more realistic view of costs allows managers to base strategic decisions on more accurate information, which should improve the quality of those decisions. While an ABC/M system alone will not transform a firm into a world-class competitor, it is an important tool to help world-class firms make effective strategic decisions. A significant amount of research is available that deals with the design and implementation of ABC/M systems (Cooper and Kaplan, 1991, Shank and Govindarajan, 1993, Turney, 1992b and Damito et al., 2000)

Traditional cost accounting methods, which allocate overhead costs on the basis of one driver (e.g. direct labor or machine hours) are inaccurate and misleading as these methods often allocate too much cost to one product and not enough to another. To address this problem, activity-based accounting was developed to provide a means to create a more accurate representation of how activities performed in the creation of a product or service actually impact its cost. ABC/M systems examine processes or activities to determine their effects on costs. An ABC/M system can be used by any firm which is able to identify activities that drive costs and allocate those costs to its particular products or services. Rather than allocating overhead on the basis of one variable, such as direct labor, ABC/M systems use multiple cost drivers to present a more accurate foundation for overhead allocation. Cost drivers are identified by actually reviewing the entire production process to uncover what activities cause those costs. ABC/M systems can be integrated with TQM, employee empowerment, and many other changes taking place in business today. While discussion of ABC/M systems was at first limited to its use as a placement for cost accounting, the focus has shifted to the identification of processes and their effects on costs. What is the future for ABC/M systems? The next logical step would seem to be linking activities between business units together, creating an ABC/M system that provides information for the whole company (Mecimore and Bell, 1995). However, it is important to realize that all functional areas must be involved in implementing an ABC/M system at the business unit level. Accountants have the important role of deciphering what activities are of value to the customer and to the organization, but it is the operations manager who should do the implementation (McConville, 1993). The company should work together to first improve the value received by customers, and then to improve the products by providing this value (Turney, 1992a).