Optimal pricing decision model based on activity-based costing

In order to find out the applicability of the optimal pricing decision model based on conventional cost behavior model after activity based costing has given strong shock to the conventional cost behavior model and its assumptions, detailed analyses have been made using the activity based cost behavior and cost volume profit analysis model, and it is concluded from these analyses that the theory behind the construction of optimal pricing decision model is still tenable under activity based costing, but the conventional optimal pricing decision model must be modified as appropriate to the activity based costing based cost behavior model and cost volume profit analysis model, and an optimal pricing decision model is really a product pricing decision model constructed by following the economic principle of maximizing profit.

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.

Research on workflow meta model supporting activity based costing

Activity based costing (ABC) is a method which can solve many limitations of the traditional cost systems in manufacturing management. In this paper, we investigate how to integrate ABC with workflow technology, and build a workflow meta model supporting ABC. Firstly, the concept and concept model of activity based costing (ABC) are introduced. Next, the meta model of P -PROCE (Process, Product, Resource, Organization, and Cost & Evaluation) is presented. Then the cost meta model is defined by adding ABC to P -PROCE model. Object constraint language (OCL) is used to express meta model and constraints. Finally, we show an enterprise modeling and simulation tool based on the workflow meta model. We can systematically construct an enterprise model and easily and efficiently conduct simulation. Moreover it enables us to analyze and evaluate business processes and its costs.

Activity Based Costing Adoption Among Manufacturing Companies in Nigeria

The study examines the extent of adoption of Activity Based Costing （ABC） among naanufacturing companies in Nigeria. The primary data were sourced through questionnaires administered to the Management Accountants of 40 selected manufacturing companies in South Western part of Nigeria. Descriptive statistics was employed to analyze the data. The study reveals that inability of the traditional cost systems to provide relevant cost was the most highly ranked reason in their decision to adopt ABC. Traditional methods of allocating overhead were therefore believed to be deficient in terms of improving global competitiveness. Also, 60% of the respondents have adopted ABC due to increased ranges of products, competition and increased overhead. Familiarity with and adoption of ABC was found to be across the manufacturing, more than half of the sample are familiar with it. The 40% of respondents who have not adopted ABC cited the cost and complexity involved with implementation as the main reason in non-adoption. However, cost of implementing ABC was enormous which hinder the small scale manufacturing from adopting it. This result may reflect the fact that larger firms are more likely to have the diverse mix of products or services that makes the use of ABC advantages. Consequently, the study recommends that the companies who have not adopted ABC because of its high cost of implementation should endeavor to consider its adoption because in the long run the benefits derive from it will outweigh its cost. It helps to identify inefficient products, departments and activities and helps to allocate more resources on profitable products. In conclusion, the senior management should also give their utmost support to the implementation and success of ABC.

A New Activity-Based Cost (ABC) Mathematical Model

Along with the product price competition growing intensely, it is apparently important for reasonably distributing and counting cost. But, in sharing indirect cost, traditional cost accounting unveils the limitations increasingly, especially in authenticity of cost information. And the accounting theory circles and industry circles begin seeking one kind of new accurate cost calculation method, and the activity based cost (ABC) method emerges as the times require. In this paper, we will build its mathematical model by the basic principle of ABC, and will improve its mathematical model further. We will establish its comparison mathematical model and make the ABC method go a step further to its practical application.

Application of Activity Based Costing in Customer Evaluation and Management

As plant develops, many industries＇ automatic level is very high leading to the increasing of indirect cost. Traditional costing methods, which use single standard of distributing indirect cost, cannot calculate cus- tomer cost accurately and satisfy managers any more. This paper is aimed on solving the aforesaid problem. In this paper we propose the thought of evaluating customer cost by using activity based costing（ABC） and the tra- ditional model of customer lifetime value（CLV） to improve the CLV model, then analyze the difference of using both models through an empirical study. As a result, ABC can account customer cost more accurately so that the CLV can help managers evaluate customer more effectively.

Study on Site-Based Cost Systemand the Division of Cost Sites in Coal Mines of China

The method on accounting the site-based cost was erected in this paper. It is well adapted to the actual production characters of China’s coal industry. The principle and detailed method of determining the boundaries among costing sites were put forward. The code structure with 7-digit number of the costing sites was also introduced. The accounting method of the site-based cost and the principle of designing the spatial characters database were expounded at the same time.

Cost-benefit analysis of screening for diabetic retinopathy among Chinese type 2 diabetes: decision from different perspectives of a population-based study

The purpose of this study is to explore whether it is worthwhile to launch a routine diabetic retinopathy (DR) screening for blindness pre-vention among Chinese type 2 diabetes from different perspective based on the popula-tion-based study in Kinmen, Taiwan. A total of 971 community dwelling adults previously di-agnosed with type 2 diabetes in 1991-1993 un-derwent DR screening in 1999-2002 by a panel of ophthalmologists using on-site indirect oph-thalmoscopy and 45-degree color fundus retinal photographs. The cost-benefit analysis is used to evaluate the DR screening. In terms of bene-fit-cost ratio, the different screening programs for DR could save New Taiwan Dollars (NTD) from 14.38 to 36.83 in discounted costs for each dollar incurred in different screening years from the societal viewpoint for Taiwan and save NTD from 0.81 to 1.80 in different screening years from health care payer’s perspective. The av-erage estimate of willingness-to-pay to translate into benefit yields NTD from 937.8 to 4,689 be- nefits per case due to DR screening in different screening years during 10-year follow-up. The net present value of the DR screening were NTD from -167,318 to -307,251.2 in different screening years. In conclusion, it is worthwhile to initial a routine DR screening of Chinese type 2 diabetes for blindness prevention from the societal per-spective but not from consumer decision based on the willingness-to-pay perspective.

Mathematical methods for main tenance and operation cost prediction based on transfer learning in State Grid

The electric power enterprise is an important basic energy industry for national development,and it is also the first basic industry of the national economy.With the continuous expansion of State Grid,the progressively complex operating conditions,and the increasing scope and frequency of data collection,how to make reasonable use of electrical big data,improve utilization,and provide a theoretical basis for the reliability of State Grid operation,has become a new research hot spot.Since electrical data has the characteristics of large volume,multiple types,low-value density,and fast processing speed,it is a challenge to mine and analyze it deeply,extract valuable information efficiently,and serve for the actual problem.According to the features of these data,this paper uses artificial intelligence methods such as time series and support vector regression to establish a data mining network model for standard cost prediction through transfer learning.The experimental results show that the model in this paper obtains better prediction results on a small sample data set,which verifies the feasibility of the deep transfer model.Compared with activity-based costing and the traditional prediction method,the average absolute error of the proposed method is reduced by 10%,which is effective and superior.

Representing the Knowledge of Public Construction Project Cost Estimator by Using Rule-Based Method

Despite the presence of various construction project cost estimate softwares, human experience and knowledge cannot be disregarded. This fact has been proven in practice, where the success of construction cost estimate process is mainly based on knowledge of human estimator. The main question concerns what human knowledge determines the success of the construction cost estimation process. To address this question we have applied Delphi technique and the output is eleven factors that are enough to precisely represent construction cost estimator knowledge. Then we have used First Order Logic (FOL) to represent these factors in terms of predicates and rules. These FOL rules could be used for evaluating construction cost estimator knowledge in five classes: fail, pass, acceptable, good, and very good. As a validation process we have done experiments using history data and the results have proved the accuracy of our proposed method.

Does driving-day-based tradable credit scheme outperform license plate rationing? Examination considering transaction cost

This article models a novel driving-day-based tradable credit scheme (DD-TCS) to alleviate urban traffic congestion. In this model, car-using allowances (in terms of the number of days in a month, termed as "credit") are freely and uniformly allocated to all travellers, who are also allowed to trade them in a market according to his/her travel needs (e.g. driving more or fewer days than the free endowment). As opposed to most studies on TCS, this paper explicitly considers the transaction cost (e.g. infor-mation cost of finding potential traders) in the trading market. To assess the feasibility of DD-TCS, we compare it against the license plate rationing (LPR) scheme, which has been practically implemented in many cities such as Beijing and Chengdu in China. Taking the performance of LPR as a benchmark, we quantify the threshold values of the transaction cost in DD-TCS when the two schemes yield equivalent performance (in terms of the total gener-alized cost). In numerical studies, we also compare the DD-TCS and LPR with the no-action case and the congestion pricing case (representing the theoretical optimum). Results show that both DD-TCS and LPR outperform the no-action case under certain conditions. With small trans-action cost, DD-TCS may achieve a lower system cost that can be very close to the ideal optimum. In addition, parameter analysis shows that DD-TCS performs better than LPR in a wide range of transaction cost, where the threshold values appear to account for a considerable portion of the auto travel time. This implies that DD-TCS will be more appealing than LPR in practice because a transaction cost lower than the extremely large threshold values can be easily achieved for the trading market, e.g. via a mobile platform and modern communication techniques.

Economic Cost of Community-Based Management of Severe Acute Malnutrition in a Rural District in Ghana

Background: The community based management of severe acute malnutrition (CMAM) was introduced in Ghana in 2008 to manage cases of severe acute malnutrition (SAM) recorded at the community level. This study estimated the economic cost of the CMAM programme for children under-five in the Agona west municipality of Ghana. Methods: A retrospective cross sectional study that used a cost analysis design was employed to estimate the economic cost of the programme from the societal perspective. Household cost data from caregivers were obtained using a semi-structured questionnaire. That of programme cost data was obtained from document reviews as well as the use of semi-structured questionnaires and subsequent discussions with key personnel of the Ghana Health Service, Food and Nutrition Technical Assistance and UNICEF. One and multi-way sensitivity analyses were conducted to test how sensitive the cost estimates are to certain variations in the cost profiles. Results: The economic household cost of CMAM was estimated as $1905.32 ($47.63 per household) of which 79% was attributed to direct cost while the remaining 21% made up indirect cost. Programme economic cost of CMAM was estimated as $27633.5 (96% recurrent and 4% capital), with refresher training constituting majority of the cost (34%). The constituents of the total economic cost of the programme, estimated as $32214.56 are programme cost (86%), household costs (6%) and community volunteer cost (8%). Therefore, the economic cost of treating one SAM case using the CMAM protocol was estimated as $805.36. Conclusion: Although CMAM has proven to be an effective tool for the management of SAM, its associated costs are quite enormous when coverage levels (geographic) are high yet small number of cases are detected and treated. Therefore, it is prudent to implement several cost saving strategies such as a reduction in the number of days spent on trainings in order to reduce these costs.

Pricing Bermudan Option with Variable Transaction Costs under the Information-Based Model

The Bermudan option pricing problem with variable transaction costs is considered for a risky asset whose price process is derived under the information-based model. The price is formulated as the value function of an optimal stopping problem, which is the value function of a stochastic control problem given by a non-linear second order partial differential equation. The theory of viscosity solutions is applied to solve the stochastic control problem such that the value function is also the solution of the corresponding Bellman equation. Under some regularity assumptions, the existence and uniqueness of the solution of the pricing equation are derived by the application of the Perron method and Banach Fixed Point theorem.

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.

POWER-AWARE ROUTING BASED ON DSR FOR MOBILE AD HOC NETWORKS

Energy consumption is a crucial design concern in Mobile Ad hoc NETworks (MANETs) since nodes are powered by batteries with limited energy, whereas Dynamic Source Routing (DSR) protocol does not take the energy limitation of MANET nodes into account. This paper proposes an energy-saving routing algorithm based on DSR: Power Aware Routing protocol based on DSR (PAR-DSR). The design objective of PAR-DSR is to select energy-efficient paths. The main features of PAR-DSR are: (1) Nodes use the Signal Attenuation Rate (SAR) to conduct power control operations; (2) Minimum path cost as metric to balance the traffic and energy consumption of wireless nodes. The simulation results show that PAR-DSR can greatly reduce the energy consumption of MANET nodes. The average node lifetime of PAR-DSR is 50%-77% longer than that of DSR.

Secure Localization Based Authentication (SLA) Strategy for Data Integrity in WNS

Wireless Sensor Networks(WSN)has been extensively utilized as a communication model in Internet of Things(IoT).As well,to offer service,numerous IoT based applications need effective transmission over unstable locations.To ensure reliability,prevailing investigations exploit multiple candidate forwarders over geographic opportunistic routing in WSNs.Moreover,these models are affected by crucial denial of service(DoS)attacks,where huge amount of invalid data are delivered intentionally to the receivers to disturb the functionality of WSNs.Here,secure localization based authentication(SLA)is presented to fight against DoS attack,and to fulfil the need of reliability and authentication.By examining state information,SLA projects a trust model to enhance efficacy of data delivery.Indeed,of the prevailing opportunistic protocols,SLA guarantees data integrity by modelling a trust based authentication,providing protection against DoS attackers and diminishing computational costs.Specifically,this model acts as a verification strategy to accelerate?attackers and to handle isolation.This strategy helps SLA in eliminating duplicate transmission and by continuous verification that results from conventional opportunistic routing.Simulation is performed in a MATLAB environment that offers authentic and reliable delivery by consuming approximately 50%of the cost in contrast to other approaches.The anticipated model shows better trade off in comparison to the prevailing ones.

Life cycle inventory for base metal ingots production in Japan including mining and mineral processing processes by cost estimating system database

CO2 emission levels of copper and zinc mines from which Japanese smelters import ore concentrates into Japan,were estimated by using a database called MLED. Eleven copper mines selected from data availability of mine site covered 84% of the total imported concentrates. Adding inventories of sea transportation and smelting processes to mine development process,total CO2 emission level for copper and zinc ingots produced in Japan were calculated. The results show that the emission share of mining and mineral processing processes for each mine is indicated around 30%-70% of total emission for ingots,which implies the importance of including the mining activities to the inventory of upper stream products.

Pollutant emission reduction effect through effluent tax,concentration-based effluent standard,or both

There are numerous studies comparing different kinds of environmental taxes and standards.However,forms of environmental standards focused by former researchers are usually quantitybased limits/standards(e.g.pounds per day or pounds per unit of output).Concentration-based emission standard(e.g.milligrams per liter of wastewater) as one important form of environmental standard has not been given much attention.In this article,comparable estimates of their probable effect on enterprise pollution reduction will be developed for concentrationbased effluent standards,effluent taxes,and a combination of both.A linear simulation model is used to clearly and obviously compare the effects of effluent taxes and concentration-based standards within the same figure.With one detailed application to the paper industry,some enlightenment and conclusions-as well as the general applicability of these principles-are then provided:Under the same effluent tax rate,enterprises,groups,and industries that are cleaner will reduce more pollutants than those that have higher pollutant abatement costs.It is recommended that effluent taxes are set by avoiding cutting it even at one stroke and considering the feasibility of pollution-reducing technology in various industries.It is necessary to reduce MAC of enterprises to better stimulate enterprises' or industries' emission reduction by preferential measures,such as high tax rate coordinated by speeding up the depreciation of environmental protection equipment.

Smart Prediction for Seamless Mobility in F-HMIPv6 Based on Location Based Services

This paper proposed a new scheme for smooth handoff over F-HMIPv6 networks based on Location Based Services(LBS). It uses the available information about mobile node(MN) such as user mobility patterns and MN's velocity to reduce handoff latency. In the proposed scheme, the movement pattern of users plays an important role in the performance analysis. The proposed scheme develops LBS that records a number of mobility patterns based on user daily behavior, and exploits these information to reduce the handoff latency. The proposed scheme is analyzed and compared with F-HMIPv6 protocol. The results show that it improves the performance in terms of handoff latency, packet delivery cost, and location update cost. Specifically, the proposed scheme achieves the tradeoff between realizing a smooth handoff and minimizing the cost that is the demand for all customers of mobile services.

Assessment of Performance Based Road Maintenance Practices in Nepal

Roads are the major asset of any country and to conserve them maintenance is essential. The delay of maintenance works can lead the road in the stage of expensive rehabilitation and reconstruction. In Nepal, Department of Roads (DoR) is responsible for maintenance of strategic roads of country. The maintenance practice of the road under Department of Road is predominantly based on Strengthen Maintenance Division Process where several maintenance activities like Routine maintenance, Recurrent Maintenance, Periodic Maintenance and Emergency Maintenance are planned and carried out. The maintenance work is based on traditional quantity and unit price based short term maintenance contracts, where maintenance of physical works is outsourced. Client demands the contractor what work is to be done, when to be do it and the extent of the work. The contractor is paid on the basis of a defined output or quantity accomplished, and the schedule of the rates. DoR engineers required full time supervision of work. Pilot based performance based maintenance practice of road started in Nepal in 2003. The study assesses performance road maintenance practices of road maintenance in Nepal on the basis of the framework of cost efficiency, level of service effectiveness and quality of service. The study concluded that implementation of Performance Based Maintenance Contract (PBMC) was not successful in Nepal as Road Asset condition was not maintained to performance standard. One of the reasons is the weak service delivery of contractor alongside weak contract enforcement from the road agency.