第三方物流企业的作业成本法【外文翻译】

第三方物流企业的作业成本法【外文翻译】本科毕业论文(设计)外文翻译外文出处 International Advances in Economic Research, 2001,7(1): 133-146.外文作者Carles Gríful-Miquela原文:Activity-Based Costing Methodology for Third-Party LogisticsCompaniesThis paper will analyze the main costs that third-party logistics companies are facing and develops an activity-based costing methodology useful for this kind of company. It will examine the most important activities carried out by third-party distributors in both warehousing and transporting activities. However, the focus is mainly on theactivity of distributing the product to the final receiver when this final receiver is not the customer of the third-party logistics company. IntroductionIn the last decade, development of third-party logistics companies has been very important. There are several reasons for such development, the most important being the trend to concentrate in the core business by manufacturing companies and new technological advances, In this context, conventional approaches to costing might generate distorted information, This can result in making wrong decisions. When companiesrealize this potential danger, the use of activity-based costing (ABC) methodologies increases within third-party logistics.Costing Methodology: Definition of the Cost Model and Critique ofthe Conventional ApproachDefinition of the Cost ModelIt is first necessary to define what a cost model is. This can be done through analysis of the main functions that any cost model should perform [Kaplan and Cooper, 1998]:1) valuation of inventory and measurement of the cost of goods and services sold for financial purposes;2) estimation of the cost of activities, products, services, and customers; and3) provide economic feedback to managers and staff in general about process efficiency.From this definition, a cost model might be analyzed as the toolthat companies use in order to have a proper understanding about the cost to run their businesses. One of the purposes of a cost model is to gather and analyze data generated in the company in order to gain useful information for making decisions. Therefore, the usefulness of a cost model may be evaluated depending on its capacity to generate the right information to make the right managerial decisions.Evolution of Cost ModelsThe evolution of cost systems has not been a linear and continuous process [Johnson and Kaplan, 1987]. Indeed, by the 1920s, companies haddeveloped almost all the management accounting procedures that have been used up to the present day. Furthermore, between 1925 and 1980,virtually no new ideas have affected the design and use of cost management systems. The same concepts always appear: break-even analysis, cost-volume-profit analysis, direct costing, and fixed and variable cost estimates. The idea that conventional accounts are only finance oriented and simply describe historical inputs is shared among other authors of costing methodology [Bellis- Jones and Develin, 1995].Problems with Conventional ApproachesAs a result of the described evolution of cost models, the situation at the beginning of the 1980s was that the actual management accounting systems provided few benefits to organizations. Normally, the reported information not only inhibited good decision making by managers, but actually encouraged bad decisions [Johnson and Kaplan, 1987]. The main reason was the use of an obsolete tool in an extremely different and more complex and competitive environment.The main problem that conventional cost models faced was theallocation of overhead by products on the basis of either direct laboror machine hour content in the1manufacturing environment. This problem was growing at the same time that direct labor and machine hour contents of many products andservices fell, while overhead costs increased. Conventional costing ignores important differences between products and services, markets andcustomers, which incur different overhead costs. This was the starting point in carefully analyzing the conventional cost models and in criticizing them because of their uselessness in accurately explaining the cost of products. Lately, the fact that the same issues apply to the service sector has been noticed.Traditional methods of cost accounting showed some other weaknesses [Bellis-Jones and Develin, 1995]. That is, companies do not know whether their products or services are profitable and they cannot distinguish profitable from unprofitable customers. In addition, traditional methods focus on the short term at the expense of the long term.A Description of ABC MethodologyThe problems that conventional costing methodologies raised were the main reason for developing a new theoretical approach to this subject. Johnson and Kaplan are considered the inventors of ABC, although they do not use this terminology at the beginning of their studies [Johnson and Kaplan, 1987]. The first time the concept of ABC appears is in a later article [Cooper and Kaplan, 1988]. The analysis of cost andprofitability of individual products, services, and customers represents a critical issue that companies were concerned with and one where ABC tries to help. The primary focus was to ask what is important for the organization, and what information is needed for management planning and control functions. Finally, useful information for managerial purposes should not be extracted only from a system designed primarily to satisfy external reporting and auditing requirements (financial information). Itis necessary to design systems consistent with the technology of the organization, its product strategy, and its organizational structure. Definition of ABCIn literature there are several definitions of ABC. The definition here shows the ABC philosophy [Hicks, 1992] briefly and clearly:2"Activity-based costing is a cost accounting concept based on the premise that products (and/or services) require an organization to perform activities and that those activities require an organization to incur costs. In activity-based costing, systems are designed so that any costs that cannot be attributed directly to a product, flow into the activities that make them necessary. The cost of each activity thenflows to the product(s) that make the activity necessary based on their respective consumption of that activity."Main Differences Between Conventional Cost Models and ABCThe most important difference between conventional cost models and ABC is the treatment of non-volume-related overhead costs. The use of direct labor-based overhead allocation methods were appropriate in the past when direct labor was the principal component of manufacturing cost, but not today. In the ABC approach, many overheads are related tospecific activities to avoid distortions in product and service costs.Another difference is the treatment of unused capacity. ABCdescribes resources that are used by activities, but conventional accounts describe resources that are supplied. The difference betweenthe two is excess capacity. If excess capacity is allocated to products, services, or customers, there is risk of a "dead spiral," as defined by Bellis-Jones and Develin [1995]. This means that the company should be aware of which costs their customers really generate and not allocate the excess of capacity to avoid the risk of overpricing its products or services. Advantages and Benefits of the ABC ApproachSeveral authors have described the main advantages and benefits of using ABC [Innes and Mitchell, 1990; Bellis-Jones and Develin, 1995; Malmi, 1997]. The most important are as follows:1) ABC provides more accurate product and service costing,particularly where non- volume-related overheads are significant.2) By using ABC, it is possible to analyze costs by areas of managerial responsibility and customers. ABC helps to recognize the way in which customers directly affect the cost structure of the business and therefore helps to analyze3customer profitability.3) ABC provides a better understanding of cost behavior as well as identifying the costs of complexity, variety, and change inherent in both the kind of service offered and customer-specific requirements.4) ABC focuses on the activities that add value, which are those activities that create value from the customer's point of view. On the other hand, the company should focus on those non-value-added activitiesand try to eliminate them, although some of the non-value-addedactivities are necessary to enable value-adding activities to occur.5) ABC is useful in performing capacity analysis. ABC measures the costs of resources used rather than the costs of resources supplied, the difference being excess capacity. It would be wrong to allocate unused capacity to the customers. To perform this analysis, the use ofpractical capacity is suggested, which means the capacity reflecting the maximum level at which the organization can operate efficiently.6) ABC reduces uncertainty and provides a more solid basis for strategic decisions. Therefore, the success of ABC might not depend only on the results of the analysis, but on its ability to provide a correct diagnosis of the company's situation. Disadvantages and Problems of the ABC ApproachThe disadvantages extracted from a study based on the answers of several companies after one year of using ABC [Cobb et al., 1992] regarded the amount of work involved, difficulties in collecting accurate data, and the fact that cost management was difficult because several activities cross department boundaries. Additionally, implementation is very time consuming, requiring not only gathering and processing of data, but also interpreting the results. Even though all of the former problems have been overcome with the development of ABC methodology and the increase in using ABC models by companies in different manufacturing and service industries, it is always necessary to be aware of these problems when developing such a model.ABC for LogisticsEven though literature mentions that ABC applies to all types of business4organizations in the service industry, including warehousing and distribution providers [Hicks, 1992], the author could not specifically find the case of a third-party logistics provider as far as thetransport operations are concerned. The main issue is to properly allocate the transport operations costs to the consignors, which are the real customers of the company.4 Furthermore, in the literature about transportation costs [Sussams, 1992], the customer is always the final consignee, and the costs are always an external variable.In recent years and because of the increasing importance oflogistics costs within companies, the first studies analyzing theutility of the activity-based approach on logistics were undertaken [Pohlen and LaLonde, 1994; LaLonde and Ginter, 1996; LaLonde and Pohlen, 1996]. The main benefits and difficulties related to the implementation of ABC for logistics departments are almost the same as those described earlier.Analysis of OverheadsThe analysis of overheads is the least obvious and the most complicated to perform. Normally, overheads are related to several activities (or nonactivities), and it is necessary to carry out in-depth studies during long periods of time in order to find out the right linksbetween overheads and products, services, or customers. For this reason, the recommendation is to be as accurate as possible in order to link overheads with consignors, avoiding the traditional approach to link, in the first instance, overheads with activities. This is very important when there is an important lack of time for developing such a costing methodology, despite the fact that this is not a pure ABC approach. The need to cope with overheads appears on both the warehouse and transport side of the model.ConclusionIt is very difficult (and not always recommended) to develop a pure ABC model because the particular characteristics of a single third-party logistics company entailed the use of slightly different ways toallocate several costs in some instances, which a purely ABC approach would not be able to do. Despite this fact, the final model for both sides of the third-party company operations (warehouse and transport operations)5has been mainly described by taking ABC analysis into account. Only when ABC does not present an answer to a specific problem should another way be considered to allocate the costs.It is recommended that such a model should be developed by using a spreadsheet because it fulfills the needs of the company, it is a very powerful tool, and it is also very user-friendly. Furthermore, the model developed may be capable of performing what-if analysis in order tosimulate actual or potential situations the third-party company might face. These what-if analyses may be used in different ways such as in the analysis of potential consignors, in the requirement of different service levels by the current consignors, and to perform the analysis of structural changes in the third-party logistics company.Finally, note that the costs of the model should not exceed its benefits. In other words, it is necessary to cope with the trade-off between a model that is so simple that it fails toprovide enough information to support the company's decisions and a model that is excessively costly to design, implement, and operate [Brimson, 1991]. This should always be taken into account, trying to achieve a happy medium between simplicity and excessive sophistication.Source: Carles Gríful-Miquela.Activity-based costing methodology for third-party logistics companies[J].International Advances in EconomicResearch, 2001,7(1): 133-146.6译文:第三方物流企业的作业成本法本文将分析第三方物流企业面临的主要成本问题并开发出适合于这一类企业的成本计算方法。