Using Abc to Improve Decision Making

515 Words3 Pages
In today’s managerial accounting, activity-based costing (ABC) is playing an important role of decision making through the companies’ operation. ABC provides relevant and accurate information for strategic decision for product pricing, process improvement, planning and budgeting. Comparing to the traditional system, ABC system can trace not only the material and labor but the manufacturing overhead cost. It provides more accurate cost information. The cost information can be used in further decision making process. ABC is all about giving management information it can use to make changes. The implementation of ABC by Volkswagen Canada’s plant in 1990s had made significant change to the company. By a implementation of a full ABC instead of the pilot project (started in 1991), it gives a far more detailed information than a pilot project, and is quicker to implement. The full ABC trace al costs to cost objects. For all of the companies, their goal is to maximize profit. So they need a costing system that can provide valuable information that helps management make decision for pricing, product costing, and purchasing. This system gives a clear vision of what are value-added activities, and what are not. The system is used in Volkswagen’s process-improvement work as well. Volkswagen has a tool named KVP2, a group of employees spending time together to explore and improve a particular process. And during each session, there is always one of the ABC analysts included. The data provided by ABC enable the process-improvement team to concentrate on what is important, and guide the team on the right track. ABC system provides the company accurate and detailed product, customer, process and activity information, and let the management know how well the organization does. In the Volkswagen’s case, although the improvements had been made, the die cast area would not make a

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