Activity Based Costing: The Key to World Class Performance

Accounting results have little to do with the activities that take place on the factory floor, in administrative offices or out in the sales field. The traditional practice of accounting leads to a number of faults which end up weakening American businesses. Two of the most prominent problems are:

The emphasis on financial measurements diverts us from improvement.
Traditional cost systems hinder excellence by hiding the elements of cost.

Activity Based Costing (ABC) helps your organization search out cost drivers and assign them directly to products and services, so that you know exactly how much each costs. All too often, our businesses are putting time and effort into projects which are losing money because overhead is under-applied.

Activity Based Costing shows you how to monitor and control activities in order to bring true costs into the open. This attention to the production line will inevitably result in savings to your bottom line. Each chapter focuses on an important facet of this new costing paradigm. You will find out how to:

Recognize the changes required to make your organization less wasteful and more competitive.
Identify the components of Total Cost and cost activities, the foundation of achieving World Class status.
Develop the product/service cost equation.
Streamline your organization into a World Class agile manufacturing environment.
Prepare cost accounting for technology changes.
Perform life cycle costing - from development to market satisfaction.
Guarantee continuous improvement.
Implement Activity Based Costing.

Companies around the world are discovering that Activity Based Costing is the engine that will drive all future improvement efforts. Read this book to see how they are putting their ideas into action.

Peter L. Grieco, Jr., is a Partner with Deloitte & Touche Consulting Group, an international consulting and education firm specializing in the areas of Just-In-Time, Total Quality Control, Automation and Systems Implementation. He was active in the development of Apple Computer's Macintosh Automated Focus Factory in Fremont, California. His industry experience encompasses both repetitive and discrete manufacturing processes. He has more than twenty-five years of experience as a practitioner and educator in the manufacturing environment. He has held numerous operation and financial positions, as well as having responsibility for numerous sales management and marketing departments.

Mr. Grieco presently serves on the Stanford Research Institute Advisory Board (SRI) and is a member of the American Society for Quality Control (ASQC), the National Association of Purchasing Management, and the American Production and Inventory Control Society (APICS) where he has held positions as: Education and Research Foundation Director, National Secretary/Treasurer, Vice President of Region I (New England), and Past President of the Hartford chapter.

Mr. Grieco is the author of several Purchasing and JIT/TQC textbooks: Purchasing Ethics, MRO Purchasing, Supply Management Toolbox, Supplier Certification II: A Handbook for Achieving Excellence Through Continuous Improvement, and World Class: Measuring Its Achievements. He has also coauthored of these latest JIT/TQC textbooks: Made In America - The Total Business Concept, Just-In-Time Purchasing: In Pursuit of Excellence, Behind Bars: Bar Coding Principles and Applications, and The World of Negotiations: Never Being A Loser. He attended Central Connecticut State University and Wharton School of Finance (Moody's School of Commerce). He is a frequent lecturer for numerous professional societies, seminars, conferences, and numerous university programs on Operations Management and Just-In-Time/Total Quality Control related topics. He is also recognized in Inventory Management for his contribution to education and training.