Abstract：Construction, like other industries, has been experiencing profound changes involving both the business environment and internal organization.In this context, new cost management information that provides better understanding and helps managing increasingly turbulent and complex production processes is needed. Activity-based costing (ABC) has been suggested as the leading contender method to replace traditional cost accounting systems, due to its capability to make the processes and activities performed in the organization more transparent and observable.
This paper reports the main results of a research project which aimed to develop a cost accounting system capable of providing useful information to manage production processes in construction and devise a model that integrates this system to the Production Planning and Control process, based on the new operations management paradigm and on the ABC ideas. The study involved three case studies, a series of interviews with construction managers and the development of prototype software.公交查询系统设计论文+源代码+文献综述(ASP.net+SQLServer)
The main conclusions of this research work are that the cost information provided by the proposed management accounting system (a) makes the production processes more transparent; (b) helps to identify production inefficiencies; (c) encourages managers to introduce corrective actions; and (d) allows the evaluation of corrective actions to be undertaken.The study also indicated that the proposed model has contributed to establish systematic procedures for production control concerned not only with time management but also with cost management.
Key words: Cost management, activity-based costing, lean construction, production control.
1. Introduction
Over the last decades, many industrial sectors have been experiencing profound changes involving both the business environment and the internal organisation. This process has been so deep and radical as to suggest that a new operations management paradigm has emerged (Bartezzaghi, 1999; Koskela, 2000). In this new competitive and turbulent environment, effective cost management information has become extremely important to drive improvement efforts (Johnson & Kaplan, 1987). 本文来自优.文~论^文·网原文请找腾讯3249,114
However, besides the environmental, managerial and technological changes occurred in the last thirty years, the existing traditional cost management systems are very similar to the ones that have been used since the mid Twenties (Johnson & Kaplan, 1987). In the face of all these changes, traditional cost account information has become mostly irrelevant and even dangerous for managerial purposes (Ploss, 1990). According to Johnson & Kaplan (1987), traditional management accounting information tends to be too late, too aggregated and too distorted to be relevant for production planning and control. The failings of the traditional management accounting systems have three important consequences. Firstly, these systems cannot provide accurate product cost. Costs are distributed to products in a simplistic and arbitrary way that usually does not represent the real demand imposed by each product on the company's resources (Johnson & Kaplan, 1987). Secondly, traditional management accounting systems fail to stimulate decisions that can affect the overall production result. Managers are sometimes encouraged to accomplish short-term goals by reducing expenses with training and investment, or even produce to stock. Although effective in short term, these decisions can seriously affect future results (Goldratt & Cox, 1992). Finally, the cost management information provided by the traditional systems is of little help to managers in their effort to improve production performance. The information provided is past-oriented and too aggregated to be useful in planning and control decisions, because these systems are developed mostly to satisfy fiscal and financial needs. The lack of transparency allied with the lack of timeliness prevents the traditional cost information to help in the identification and correction of production flow inefficiencies. 2435