Improving Manufacturing Management with Activity Based Costing

The calculation of product cost in modern manufacturing enterprises includes assigning direct costs and indirect costs (overhead) to products. Direct material and direct labor costs can be traced to individual products or batches of products. However, because overhead is an indirect cost and benefits more than one product, it is difficult if not impossible to determine the true overhead cost associated with the overhead resources consumed to manufacture individual products produced. The factory resources included in overhead are an important component of manufacturing product. Overhead costs have traditionally been allocated to products using allocation bases which are correlated to the incurrence of cost such as direct labor hours, direct labor cost, or machine hours using one or few plant-wide allocation base for this purpose. The resulting product costs are used for external financial reporting and are also often used internally as a source of information for management decisions. The information provided by traditional cost systems is often so inaccurate it causes managers to do the wrong things. Further, traditional product costing offers little help to managers in their efforts to reduce costs. Activity based costing is a technique that allocates cost based on activities and volumes that cause cost. The use of these cost causes, called cost drivers, significantly increases product cost accuracy and also encourages managers to take cost-cutting actions that result in true cost savings to the firm. This paper will explore activity based costing and how it can help manufacturers to increase product cost accuracy and to reduce costs.