Cost Management

Prologue: modern management practices. Part 1 Setting the stage - the importance of analyzing and managing cost: the role of cost management - finding opportunity and leading change; using lead and lag measures to communicate, motivate, and evaluate; managing costs of constrained resources; measuring costs of operations. Part 2 Cost measurement systems - designing cost management systems to support decision-making and financial reporting: the design and use of activity-based costing systems; job and project costing; process coasting; joint cost allocation; service cost allocation and outsourcing. Part 3 Process management - identifying opportunities for improvement: theory and implementation of activity-based management; managing quality and time. Part 4 Cost-based decision-making: identifying and using differential costs of alternative choices - cost estimation; differential costs and financial modelling; long-term decisions -standard costing, variance analysis and Kaizen costing; flexible budgets, overhead cost management, and activity-based budgeting; sales performance evaluation, customer profitability analysis, and non-financial performance measures. Part 5 Performance management: creating and managing value-added effort, responsibility accounting and investment centre performance measures; transfer pricing; incentive systems and performance measurement.