Integrating Activity-Based Costing （ABC） and Theory of Constraint （TOC） for Improved and Sustained Cost Management

Implementing effective cost management approaches has recently gained momentum due to intense competition and increasing customer demands. Moreover, effective cost management approaches have contributed to firms＇ competitive advantage in relation to cost leadership strategy. Consequently, firms have implemented contemporary cost management systems, such as activity-based management, business process re-engineering, life-cycle costing, target costing, and theory of constraint （TOC）, to enable them to become low-cost producers and compete effectively and sustain their performance. Furthermore, focusing on cost management to improve profitability has led to the integration of activity-based costing （ABC） and TOC. Therefore, the aim of this study is to review literature and discuss how integration of ABC and TOC can result in improved and sustained cost management. While these methods have different approaches in addressing cost management, treating them as complementary cost management approaches can result in improved cost management due to improved product costing, improved cost reporting, improved product-mix decisions, and improved cycle-time management. Improvement in cost management will then result in sustained cost management. Sustained cost management is further enhanced with the investment in information customer and shareholder value technology that supports cross-functional decision making to continue creating to remain competitive in the market.

An improved activity-based costing model for product cost estimation applied in a complex manufacturing environment

In order to evaluate and estimate me cosEs oi prouuct~ plt, uu^u e vironment properly, an improved activity-based costing （ABC） model is presented. By utilizing the input-output analysis method, the complex consumption relationships in a complex manufacturing environment are first expressed. The consumption characteristics （mainly presented by the activity rates） of all production activities are extracted by solving these relationships. Then with the con- sumption characteristics and operating parameters of these activities, the detailed cost consumption of a product in its manufacturing process is estimated. A case study is finally given based on the compressor products of a manufacturing company, and its effectiveness is shown. As the cost influ- ence of complex consumption relationships is fully considered, the limitation of traditional ABC method is overcome, and therefore a high accuracy in product cost estimation under the complex manufacturing environment can be achieved.

Activity-Based Costing of Library Services in Universities——A Case Study of a Private University

An organization’s costing system is a system that helps the management with the strategy planning while the system plays an important role in providing accurate cost information about the products and customers.In other words,the costing management system is important to provide timely and quality information to help managers in their decision-making process.Producing quality graduates is the main objective of any university and the cost of quality or the cost of poor quality is one that is often difficult to measure in higher education.This can be partly attributed to the fact that most accounting systems are not structured to capture important cost-of-quality information.In order to succeed,many organizations tend to shift from conventional or traditional costing system to Activity-based costing(ABC).ABC provides both higher education administrators and policymakers with better information on which to base decisions.The use of multiple cost pools and drivers under ABC leads to more detailed and accurate product costing than that provided by traditional cost systems.This paper attempts to investigate the possibilities and limitations of implementing ABC in universities.More specifically the study makes use of the case study method to illustrate the implementation of activity-based costing of library services in a private university in the Kingdom of Bahrain.The research methodology of the case study is a combination of both descriptive and quantitative analyses.The study identified six categories of cost pools which are related to the activities of the library as well as 17 relevant cost drivers.Accordingly,ABC should lead to a better understanding of what drives costs and,by extension,what changes are necessary to reduce costs.Unnecessary activities that do not add value to services can be identified and eliminated.Further ABC is feasible in an academic library and that much can be gained from the process of analyzing activities.However,more work needs to be done in terms of designing accounting and other information systems to capture cost and activity transaction data in a more routine and disaggregated form for ABC analysis.

A Study on Cost Control of Agricultural Water Conservancy Projects Based on Activity-based Costing

Based on the theory of activity-based costing and the idea of value chain,activity optimization and cost control are carried out on the whole construction process of agricultural water conservancy projects. Through the use of literature review,case analysis and statistical analysis and other methods,with agricultural water conservancy projects as the research object,and comparing activity-based costing with the traditional model of cost accounting,the writer carries out the corresponding value chain analysis,and comes to the following conclusion: the statistical calculation and analysis of the entire construction process based on activity-based costing can accurately and effectively control the costs of water conservancy projects. Through the use of activity-based costing,the cost data of agricultural water conservancy projects is more detailed and accurate,and cost management personnel can also find non-value-added activities,optimize the enterprise's value chain and achieve cost control objectives through the analysis of the activity chain and value chain of agricultural water conservancy projects.

Modem Cost Management in the Transport Company Through the Activity-Based Costing （ABC） Method

Road transport is a flexible mode of transport and its importance in era of globalization increases. Management of road transport companies is, in this turbulent environment, exposed to many technical, legislative, and economic problems. Especially, the growing economic pressure leads to an urgent requirement of the manager and control system improvement. Activity-based costing （ABC） method is a very powerful tool to improve products, services, processes, and market strategies. ABC allows company management to understand what causes costs and how to manage them. Company under this scheme may get a glimpse of how efficiently a company converts the source value. The main objective of our research was to assess the possibility of application of the ABC method in a transport undertaking. ABC method as a fundamentally different view on the cost in the transport business helps to find the reasons of cost and thereby influences their levels to make better use of resources.. New managerial accounting methods aim to show management what information is needed, how and where this information can be obtained, and how they can be useful for the management of the company＇s proper planning, decision-making, and control. Information provided by management accounting is often a key factor in the analysis of alternative ways of solving problems. This article focuses on the transport enterprise management and helps to decide on the use of this method in business practice.

China's Development Modeli:the Costs and Benefits of the Decentralization Approach to Transition

This article provides a coherent framework within which to understand China’s development model,as well as the successes and the failures of China’s decentralization approach to reform.The combination of political centralization and economic decentralization provide local government with enough incentives to develop local economies,in particular incentives to promote market privatisation locally.However,the relative evaluation-based incentive schemes lead to inter- regional market segmentation,increasing inter-regional development gaps and the unequal provision of certain public goods.The success of early-stage reform can be attributed to the benefits of the decentralization approach.The next stage reform should however focus on minimizing the associated costs.China’s gradualist reform can be seen as a mechanism design issue under the control of central government.Therefore,it is essential to take both the costs and benefits of the decentralization approach into account in the design of the next-stage reform package.

Costing and Pricing in Healthcare Private Firms

This article analyzes the development of an activity-based costing （ABC） system in a private Italian healthcare firm. Findings shed light on the role of the cost accounting system in price assessment： It outlines new opportunities for the identification of the service mix offered as well as for price optimization. Because private companies provide services both within the public system--where the National Health System （NHS） provides fixed reimbursement fees--and within the private system--where prices are defined by each company. Accurate cost information is extremely important to support managers in the analysis of the service mix profitability offered in each system. For the business segment in which companies do not have flexibility in setting prices, cost information enables managers to identify services which may present profitability problems. For the business segment where price flexibility exists, cost information supports the identification of pricing errors so that charges can be better defined.

Quality-Oriented Facade Systems： Initial Investments vs. Global Cost Approach

An analysis applied to an existing building considering the whole service life, regulated or, if any, measured, of energy/technological upgrading action does not only require initial investments to be taken into account. Of course, such investments are significant and will have to be considered at a first stage, but it is not the only aspect to be considered. Provisions of Construction Procurement Guidance, No.7 Whole Life Costs state： ＂All procurement must be made solely on the basis of value for money in terms of the optimum combination of global costs--and not only initial investment costs--and quality to meet the user＇s requirements＂.

Study on the Application of Time-Driven Activity - Based Costing in Hotels——Taking a Hotel as an Example

The time-driven activity-based costing has received extensive attention from scholars both at home and abroad in recent years,which has been applied to the calculation of manufacturing operations and the cost of products.However, this approach is rarely introduced into the service sector.As to the hospitality industry, the profitability of the customer usually plays a decisive role in the business process.Therefore, this article takes the hotel service industry as the research point and allocates the costs of resources of each departments to customers according to time drivers.The focus of this paper is to calculate the costs of customers ,and then analyze the profitability of customers in order to take the appropriate marketing strategies to improve the hotel service industry Drofitabilitv.

Estimating the severity levels of road traffic crashes in Bahrain with crash costs estimated with different approaches

An important issue in analyzing accident blackspots is the estimation of severity levels of different types of accidents.This study aims to estimate the severity level of accidents in Bahrain using crash costs.These crash costs were calculated by the Human Capital Approach(HCA)and total reported costs from the victims.The data was collected from the General Directorate of Traffic,insurance companies,Ministry of Works(MoW)and Ministry of Health.It was found,from the survey responses,that there was no significant effect of victim characteristics on the total cost of the accidents.The severity levels were found to be higher than those found in previous literature or adopted by local authorities which could be attributed to the economic conditions of Bahrain.Moreover,the weights found by both approaches were different from each other.Therefore,it is recommended to use the HCA approach due to its comprehensive calculations involving future costs.

Optimizing a Transportation System Using Metaheuristics Approaches (EGD/GA/ACO): A Forest Vehicle Routing Case Study

The large-scale optimization problem requires some optimization techniques, and the Metaheuristics approach is highly useful for solving difficult optimization problems in practice. The purpose of the research is to optimize the transportation system with the help of this approach. We selected forest vehicle routing data as the case study to minimize the total cost and the distance of the forest transportation system. Matlab software helps us find the best solution for this case by applying three algorithms of Metaheuristics: Genetic Algorithm (GA), Ant Colony Optimization (ACO), and Extended Great Deluge (EGD). The results show that GA, compared to ACO and EGD, provides the best solution for the cost and the length of our case study. EGD is the second preferred approach, and ACO offers the last solution.

Characterization of Thermo-Physical Properties of Cement-Based Blocks of Varied Sand Types Using Cost-Effective Enhancement Approach

The dominant property of building envelope fabric which contributes significantly to minimize electricity utilization in building is the thermo-physical properties. There is inadequate literature on representative practical data of thermo-physical properties of the dominant building envelope components in Ghana. This study aims to use cost-effective approach to characterize the thermo-physical properties of only cement-based mortar and concrete blocks used in Ghana for building components specifically wall design. Mixed methods research design was employed to achieving the aim. A questionnaire survey was used among sampled building fabric components manufacturers to pick representative data on thermos-physical properties of their mortar and concrete blocks. Also, an experimental procedure employing a transient technique with a TCi Thermal Analyser was used to determine the thermo-physical properties of selected mortar and concrete blocks from Ghana in addition to designed parametric mortar and concrete blocks with varied ratios obtained from the survey were undertaken at University of Nottingham. From the study, a trend of decreasing thermal conductivity and thermal effusivity with corresponding decreasing sand content was observed with all the different sand types. The thermal conductivities of both mortar and concrete parametric blocks meet the range of expected standard values outlined in Chattered Institute of Building Services Engineers (CIBSE) Guide A. The major limitation of the work is the dimension of the sample size;which is not inconsistent with standard block size due to the experimental setup used. It is expected that, the characterization of the predominant cement-based building fabrics components will contribute to improved building performance analysis with significant savings in electricity utilization for space cooling.

A Heuristics-Based Cost Model for Scientic Workow Scheduling in Clou

Scientic Workow Applications(SWFAs)can deliver collaborative tools useful to researchers in executing large and complex scientic processes.Particularly,Scientic Workow Scheduling(SWFS)accelerates the computational procedures between the available computational resources and the dependent workow jobs based on the researchers’requirements.However,cost optimization is one of the SWFS challenges in handling massive and complicated tasks and requires determining an approximate(near-optimal)solution within polynomial computational time.Motivated by this,current work proposes a novel SWFS cost optimization model effective in solving this challenge.The proposed model contains three main stages:(i)scientic workow application,(ii)targeted computational environment,and(iii)cost optimization criteria.The model has been used to optimize completion time(makespan)and overall computational cost of SWFS in cloud computing for all considered scenarios in this research context.This will ultimately reduce the cost for service consumers.At the same time,reducing the cost has a positive impact on the protability of service providers towards utilizing all computational resources to achieve a competitive advantage over other cloud service providers.To evaluate the effectiveness of this proposed model,an empirical comparison was conducted by employing three core types of heuristic approaches,including Single-based(i.e.,Genetic Algorithm(GA),Particle Swarm Optimization(PSO),and Invasive Weed Optimization(IWO)),Hybrid-based(i.e.,Hybrid-based Heuristics Algorithms(HIWO)),and Hyper-based(i.e.,Dynamic Hyper-Heuristic Algorithm(DHHA)).Additionally,a simulation-based implementation was used for SIPHT SWFA by considering three different sizes of datasets.The proposed model provides an efcient platform to optimally schedule workow tasks by handing data-intensiveness and computational-intensiveness of SWFAs.The results reveal that the proposed cost optimization model attained an optimal Job completion time(makespan)and total computational cost for small and large sizes of the considered dataset.In contrast,hybrid and hyper-based approaches consistently achieved better results for the medium-sized dataset.

An Optimal DASH Diet Model for People with Hypertension Using Linear Programming Approach

Selecting diets by quantitative techniques is becoming increasingly common. Linear programming is the most popular technique for the selection of least cost mixes of food to meet specific nutritional requirements for a particular group of persons for either general health or disease-related reason. Hypertension is a silent killer and its prevalence rate especially in the developing countries, which has been mostly associated to demographic, environmental and genetic factors, is becoming alarming. The DASH diet has been clinically proven to prevent and control hypertension. In this paper, a model that provides a Daily Optimal (minimum cost) DASH Diet plan for people with hypertension is formulated. The objective is to obtain daily minimum cost diet plans that satisfy the DASH Diets’ nutrients Tolerable Upper and Lower Intake for different daily Calorie Levels. The formulated DASH diet model was further illustrated using real data set with food samples gotten from the DASH eating plan chart. A DASH diet model for a hypertensive person with a 2000-daily-caloric need was formulated and its optimal diet plan for a day obtained with a total cost of 944.41 Naira. Optimal diet plans for other recommended daily calorie levels were also obtained.

Sequential Approach with Matrix Framework for Various Types of Economic Thermal Power Dispatch Problems

This paper presents a sequential approach with matrix framework for solving various kinds of economic dispatch problems. The objective of the economic dispatch problems of electrical power generation is to schedule the committed generating units output so as to meet the required load demand while satisfying the system equality and inequality constraints. This is a maiden approach developed to obtain the optimal dispatches of generating units for all possible load demands of power system in a single execution. The feasibility of the proposed method is demonstrated by solving economic load dispatch problem, combined economic and emission dispatch problem, multiarea economic dispatch problem and economic dispatch problem with multiple fuel options. The proposed methodology is tested with different scale of power systems. The generating unit operational constraints are also considered. The simulation results obtained by proposed methodology for various economic dispatch problems are compared with previous literatures in terms of solution quality. Numerical simulation results indicate an improvement in total cost saving and hence the superiority of the proposed method is also revealed for economic dispatch problems.

Research on selection methods of cost driver

In the implementation of activity-based costing, cost driver is the true reason to determine the occurrence of costs and the consumption of resources, and correctly selecting the cost driver is the key to calculating the cost of the product accurately. Beginning with the meaning of cost driver and its characteristics, this article analyses its classification, and then, focuses on its selection method.

INFLUENCING PARAMETERS OF THE LIFE CYCLE COST-ENERGY RELATIONSHIP OF BUILDINGS

Buildings contribute around 45%of the world’s energy consumption.Reducing energy demand in buildings therefore plays a vital role in addressing the depletion of energy resources and associated environmental issues.Previous research explored the optimisations of the costs and energy consumption of buildings,but often overlooked the connections,tradeoffs and synergies between them.The aim of this paper is thus to develop a theoretical model of the influencing parameters of the life cycle cost-energy relationship(LCCER)of buildings using the Political,Economic,Sociocultural,Technological,Environmental and Legal(PESTEL)analytical framework.is study was carried out through a critical literature review,model development and validation through case studies with four zero or nearly zero energy building projects carefully selected from the European Union and Australia.The developed model addresses the buildings’LCCER by identifying the key influencing parameters and explicating the mechanisms(namely,the simultaneous and unilateral effects)by which the identified parameters affect such relationship.The important influencing parameters were found to reside in two aspects:(1)internal project designs covering building characteristics,building structure and function,and construction process,and(2)external environments covering climate,economic condition,occupant behaviour,policy and regulation,and buildings’lifespan focused in the studies.Various statistical correlations were found to exist between the costs and energy consumption of the studied cases.It is summarised that these correlations may be attributable to the synergy between the simultaneous and unilateral effects of the identified parameters.The developed model contributes a systemic approach to examining the building’s life cycle economics and energy in a comparative manner.

降低我国农产品物流成本的现实困境与实现路径

降低农产品物流成本是全社会物流降本增效过程的重要环节,是现阶段农业产业转型升级的现实需求。从全链条和全流程视角剖析农产品物流成本的构成要素、现实问题与影响因素,提出农产品物流降本增效的创新模式。首先,从物流各环节功能结构与费用发生形态着手,厘清农产品物流成本的具体范畴与构成要素,农产品物流成本由生产加工成本、存储成本、流通成本、损耗成本与信息成本五个方面组成。其次,针对物流不同成本构成要素的管理现状进一步分析发现,我国农产品物流成本管理面临一系列现实问题:一是技术覆盖不全与操作不当导致的全流程高损耗;二是环节衔接不畅与技术滞后产生的流通运输高费用;三是劳动力资源配置不合理带来的高人工成本;四是技术投资的盲目性、重复性与依赖性引发的技术冗余高成本。再次,基于社会技术系统理论,围绕当前农产品物流成本管理面临的现实问题,挖掘和识别出农产品物流成本的影响因素,主要包括一个社会层面因素(物流主体特征)、两个技术层面因素(物流基础设施和信息技术水平)以及一个环境层面因素(行业市场环境)。最后,从多方参与主体的耦合协调视角出发,提出降低农产品物流成本的五维路径:一是促进全链条规模化、标准化与集约化整合,打通物流组织化降本路径;二是加快推进物流数字化发展,构建全流程信息化降本路径;三是推动冷链基础设施建设,强化物流技术性降本路径;四是优化行业市场环境,落实物流市场规范化降本路径;五是完善配套政策支持体系,支撑物流制度性降本路径。

工程造价纠纷多元化解决途径研究

随着我国经济体制改革不断深化,投资主体多元化、利益诉求复杂化、纠纷类型多样化成为建筑行业的突出特点,构建建设工程造价纠纷多元化解决途径和方法是“把非诉讼解决机制挺在前面”的重要举措。为了解工程造价纠纷现状,以陕西省为例,通过交流座谈、问卷调查等方式,调研47家相关单位。文章基于工程造价纠纷改革措施及调研现状,梳理分析相关纠纷解决方法存在的问题与原因,对纠纷多元化化解过程中涉及的相关单位,厘清其在多元化纠纷解决机制中的角色定位,从和解、调解、仲裁、诉讼等方面提出解决途径和建议,从加强诉源治理、完善的解纷机制、成立第三方专业技术平台分析多元的可行性,推动当事人、行业组织、司法机关、仲裁机构与行业主管部门联动配合的多元解纷模式建立。