The Rationale for Cost management
Organisations have to incur costs to carry out their business and cost management is a part of business which helps the management to steer the company on the smooth road.In the article, an attempt has been made to explore the philosophy of cost and the ways to control it to stay competitive. Both quantitative and qualitative aspect of costs are important ,too much adherence to quantitative aspects might erode the benefits of qualitative aspect of the cost. Effective managers have the wisdom to recognize the qualitative aspect of the cost and it is a sine qua non of their strategies. An astute manager not only focuses on the internal cost management(ICM) but also the interorganisational cost managemen(IOCM)t.The scope of cost management is not limited to quantitative analysis but it is an overall concept. It is generally accepted that one of management’s primary roles is to optimize profits by controlling costs effectively. This includes costs associated with operating the day-today business, such as those related to labor, materials, and administrative functions, as well as more strategic costs, such as those for research and development (R&D) and capital investments in property and equipment. Traditionally, companies have focused on costs that they can control from within, which is known as internal cost management (ICM). But with the advent of technology capable of measuring and tracking costs along a supply chain, there is an emerging trend to manage costs associated with supply chain partners, too. Broadly speaking, a manager’s role in the context of
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How IOCM Is applied
Cost management plays a major role when maintaining profit margins. Management must be able to find in which areas of a business costs must be reduced and the consequences that such reductions have in the overall company. In some situations management must change the way the work is being done in order to decrease costs while in other cases changing one supplier for another might be enough, in both situations a tradeoff will occur and the consequences will impact the company as a whole.
The Chester team will implement a Broad Cost Leader and Broad Differentiation strategy, maintaining a presence in every segment of the market place. We hope to gain a competitive advantage by getting R&D costs, production costs, and raw material costs as low as possible. Our Cost Leader position will help us with a competitive advantage based on price, we will price our products fairly average. Not too low but not too high either. Our products will keep up with the changes in the market, also offering improved size and performance and if needed improved reliability. We will moderately increase automation levels to improve our contribution margins
Chet Craig is the Central Plant Manager of the Norris Company. He started as an expediter in the company's eastern plant and was quickly promoted to Production Supervisor in three years. After two years, he was promoted to Assistant to the Manager of the Eastern Plant. Five years later, Chet was transferred to the central plant as an Assistant, and after one month, was promoted to his current position.
According to the Case Management Society of America, case management is "a collaborative process of assessment, planning, facilitation, care coordination, evaluation, and advocacy for options and services to meet an individual's and family's comprehensive health needs through communication and available resources to promote quality, cost effective outcomes" (Case Management Society of America [CMSA], 2010). As a method, case management has moved to the forefront of social work practice. The social work profession, along with other fields of study, recognizes the difficulty of locating and accessing comprehensive services to meet needs. Therefore, case managers work with these
Case management refers to when a person or people in need require an environmental intervention. The Conrad Hilton Association defines case management as “one of the primary services offered to individuals and families who face multiple challenges, including severe mental illness, addiction, and homelessness.” Case management often helps those who are struggling or who are in need, however, the term tends to be used very loosely within organizations.
The new president believes that the key to the new strategy is to be able to understand the true nature (i.e. costs of customers and orders. He feels that if the company is able to tie costs to customers in an accurate manner, it will enable the company to better focus on higher profitability. Major Issues: What is the ' Understand the cost structure of the company. Allocate costs on a per customer and per order basis. Implement a new cost system that will support the new cost allocation methodology.
Since more than 40 years, Toyota Company was thinking how to develop the traditional process costing system and the production system. Some of the companies believe that the increasing of the production is a big profit, while Toyota proved the opposite. The more you increase the products out of the need of the market, the more losses you are going to gain. This kin...
The overall purpose of cost accounting is to advise top administration and the management team on the most suitable and cost effective methods and actions to employ based on cost, capability and efficiencies of a given product or service. It can be defined as the method where all the expenditures used during execution of business activities are gathered, categorized, examined and noted down (Horngren & Srikant, 2000). Once these numbers are gathered and recorded the information is used to determine a selling price and/or to identify possible investment opportunities. Although the principal aim or function of cost accounting is to help the business administration with their decision making and business planning process, the cost accounting data
From the A12 redesign proposal, it shows that the current standard cost system is unable to link the reduction in the number of parts to activity reductions and cost savings. The labor-direct-based standard cost system reflects the cost of A12 is distorted. Using the ABC system, according to the activities of A12 allocate the overhead cost to A12 that could find that the current overhead cost of A12 was overstated by the standard cost system. At last, A12 Junction Box could be identified it is an attractive and profitable product, at the same time, it demonstrates the value of ABC.
Every company has some kind of Revenue and they all have costs that are associated with running the company. It is also true that if a company wants to increase their Revenue, their costs will increase too. It is every company’s goal to maximize revenue and either through Production or Services, and minimize cost. These things are easy to figure out, but actually identifying the production and figuring out how it will increase or decrease with change is very difficult.
Cost accounting system has two types, job order costing, and process cost system. These two cost systems are very different, almost every company uses order costing or process costing. Starbucks, is a coffee shop where citizens congregate to drink there morning coffee, study, and or socialize. Starbucks is one of the oldest and largest privately held specialty coffee retailer in the United States. (Starbucks) Their passion is to discover the flavors you love and always bring it home, delivering the look, taste and aroma of the world’s best coffee and teas. Job order costing is a very easy way in order to help Starbucks managers to know how much profit their company (Starbucks) made.
The business environment is increasingly becoming competitive and challenging. In the recent past, manufacturers have found themselves facing the threat of dwindling profit margins due to unfortunate global events such as the 2007 global financial crisis and the on going Europe economic crisis. The need to improve operation efficiency so as to ensure current and future investment yield the highest rate of return has therefore become extremely important. Manufacturers are now actively engaged in, managing their costs, Research and Development, adopting best procurement strategies, among other Actions. While such actions might eventually lead to positive results, additional business value can be achieved through proper management of the supply chain (Waymer, Ivanaj & Mussa 2009; Krivda 2004).
Shields, M., & Young, S. (1992). Effective long-term cost reduction: a strategic perspective. Journal of Cost Management , 6 (2), 16-30.
It deals with information flow or the flow of products and services. In short it is a relationship of operations and processes. One of the reasons for successes of Tata Motors was their excellent supply chain management. Their efficiency to quickly work with the suppliers in estimating the cost before their contenders is marvellous. In Nano’s case, they quickly estimated the price of the car with the suppliers. They first determined the functional requirements of all the Nano parts without even letting the public know about their intentions. Tata Motors use Ariba Spend Management as their SCM, which is a state of art cost calculating software. It has helped Tata Motors to reduce cost by helping them find new suppliers, rationalize its supply base and run on-time
Activity-based costing (ABC) is a costing method that is designed to provide managers with cost information for strategic and other decisions that potentially affect capacity and therefore “fixed” as well as variable costs. Activity-based costing is mostly used for internal decision making and managing activities while traditional costing method is used to provide data for external financial reports. Most organization uses activity-based costing as an addition system for using traditional absorption costing as sometimes the traditional cost system misleads the product’s profitability. In a company, there are many products on sale, if one product is sold at a high price with low product margin and a product with high product margin at a low price, it may result in a loss. In addition, due to the reason that cost drivers and enterprises business may change, activity-based costing analysis also needs to be revised periodically. This amendment should be prompted to change pricing, product, customer focus and market share strategy to improve corporate profitability.