پیاده سازی سیستم هزینه یابی مبتنی بر فعالیت در شرکت تولیدی The implementation of an Activity-Based Costing (ABC) system in a manufacturing company

1. Introduction The business environment in which today’s companies are inserted has undergone enormous changes over the last decades caused by deregulation, increased global competitiveness, reduced costs associated with information, demand for greater diversity of products, among others. The development of new technologies, essentially linked to automation and information systems, has led to significant advances, which have had repercussions on the various organizations that make up the business fabric, affecting virtually all the departments and their areas of intervention. Companies no longer compete locally only and have come to deal with competition from companies located on other continents, embedded in distinct realities and diverse business environments. These changes have forced these organizations to implement ever more sophisticated costing systems [3]. Important decision-making within an organization, such as the placing of new products on the market or the continuation or termination of the marketing of other products or services, as well as the design and definition of the selling price, will have to be supported by reliable information regarding to their industrial cost and profitability [4]. Customer satisfaction is a key prerequisite for the viability of companies and organizations. However, customer satisfaction must be ensured by meeting their expectations, but the selling price of the product will always have to be higher than its production cost. This is a requirement that companies can-not abdicate [5]. As a consequence of the profound changes that have taken place over the last few years, there is strong pressure in the organizations to increase productivity at reduced prices, so that to obtain a method of estimating the costs of the various products produced in the same company in a rigorously and accurately way has become a strategic objective [2]. However, the mere knowledge of the costs of a particular product may not be sufficient for a company to remain competitive. There is a need to constantly improve their processes by detailing how the various activities within the company are developed in order to increase efficiency and effectiveness, which will lead to more competitive and higher quality products and services [6]. On the other hand, the selection of the costing method more appropriate to the reality of each organization can be a complex task [7], and the misallocation of indirect fixed costs, as it occur in some traditional costing systems, leads to obtaining incorrect industrial costs and may lead to misallocated management decisions [8]. The Activity-Based Costing (ABC) method has been seen as a useful tool to achieve a costing system more efficient, since it identifies and analyses the production activities that lead to the product object of the cost [9].