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The paper aims to examine the activity‐based costing (ABC) method as a feasible and appropriate tool for the casino and hotel industry to apply to support kitchens in order to eliminate the monthly allocation of overhead based on variable costs.

Data were collected at a support kitchen in a Las Vegas casino. These data were analyzed by using ABC methods and establishing ABC costs. ABC methods were compared to traditional allocation methods to determine, first, if allocations could be eliminated entirely; and, secondly, to establish if some outlets would be significantly impacted by the accounting change.

An ABC approach can be applied to support kitchens and total cost (ABC) can be estimated. This approach allowed the casino to eliminate traditional allocation methods based solely on food cost.

ABC was shown to be a powerful technique that can be applied effectively in a support kitchen of a casino. Since this paper involved only a single support kitchen in a single casino, further research should be conducted to confirm that ABC can also be applied in support kitchens in other hospitality industry settings.

The use of ABC techniques confirmed that the ABC process is a useful tool in an effort to abolish allocations and can be applied to the remaining support kitchens. Without the benefit of this paper, restaurant management for individual food and beverage outlets received an unfair share of the overhead and did not have appropriate cost information for bread products.

ABC may be a powerful technique when applied effectively to the food and beverage operations in the field of hospitality.

The design and implementation of new strategic management initiatives, such as reengineering, have been common since the publication of Hammer and Champy’s (1993) popular book on reengineering. In the process of designing and implementing these new initiatives, however, managers have virtually ignored the cost management system. Activity‐based management (ABM) is a system that incorporates many of the concepts of strategic management reengineering and applies them to cost management. ABM consists of two viewpoints: a cost view and a process view. ABM is both an accurate cost accounting system (the cost view) and a performance evaluation tool (the process view). This paper presents the ten steps to design and implement an ABM system and offers an actual application.

This paper aims to examine whether using menu engineering (ME) together with activity-based costing (ABC) for menu analysis provides new insights into true menu profitability. The traditional ME approach only uses food costs to determine the contribution margin (CM) of individual menu items. This combined approach uses both food and traceable operating costs to estimate CMs more accurately.

An improved ME model was developed and tested in an oriental restaurant in Brazil. Direct observation of restaurant activities allowed most costs to be traced (not simply allocated) to individual menu items.

The results revealed small differences in the rankings between the traditional approach and ABC/ME, demonstrating that the integration of ABC with ME made it to possible to identify increased food-costs and lower CMs for all groups of menu items. The results also show that ABC methods are applicable to an oriental-style restaurant.

Just one restaurant and only 80 per cent of the menu were examined in this study. Future research should apply the model used here to other restaurant types located in different geographical areas to validate the approach.

The results suggest that ME can be improved upon by first assessing variable costs using ABC methods.

This paper combines two different analytic techniques (ME and ABC) into a new approach that reveals the true picture of profit and loss for a menu from a restaurant in Brazil.

The purpose of this paper is to present a new method for life‐cycle costing (LCC) called activity‐based LCC by employing the comprehensive activity‐based life‐cycle assessment method. A real‐life case study of a platform supply vessel operating in the North Sea is utilized to present the method, illustrate an implementation, including results, and discuss the benefits. Furthermore, due to the inherent uncertainty in LCC, handling of uncertainty is emphasized. A crucial side‐effect of handling uncertainty by employing Monte Carlo simulations – as activity‐based LCA prescribes – is the greatly enhanced tracing of critical success factors. Such tracing enables the shipowners to increase long‐term profitability by focusing on what is critical to their success. Also, a design option of using heavy fuel oil versus marine gas oil is investigated.

The aim of the paper is to present and illustrate a new approach for long‐range planning.

Building on well‐tested frameworks such as activity‐based costing (ABC), life‐cycle costing (LCC) and Monte Carlo methods as well as earlier case studies, an approach is developed further and tested using a real‐life case.

The effectiveness of the approach is confirmed using a process‐oriented framework (ABC) and introducing an LCC perspective. Monte Carlo methods are used to handle uncertainty and identify risks and critical success factors.

The presented research is a starting‐point for developing a simple approach for budgeting that overcomes many of the problems with traditional budgeting.

The paper shows how long‐range planning can be performed in a realistic fashion without ending up in many of the traps of traditional budgeting.

The paper presents an approach that can help corporations anticipate the future much more realistically than before.

Activity‐based costing (ABC) is widely proclaimed to be revolutionizing the way in which costs are allocated in business. Instead of allocating overhead costs on volume‐related bases ABC allocates costs directly to products based on activity “drivers”. Since it is activities which “drive” costs, the belief is that understanding what causes costs will provide a more accurate measure of the true cost of a product. This has direct application to industrial marketing decision making, but the marketing literature is virtually devoid of its mention. To fill this void this article first describes ABC and shows shows how changes in the cost structure of US industry have led to the need for a new approach to cost allocation. Next, presents case histories which describe the payoffs which have accrued to industrial marketers who have pioneered in the application of this new method. Then, outlines procedures for implementing ABC. Finally, presents numerical examples which demonstrate the effect of ABC on cost allocation and profits.

Explains the differences between traditional cost behavior, which divides costs into variable and fixed categories, and activity‐based costing (ABC), which divides these same costs into those that vary with unit‐level activities, batch‐level activities, and product‐level activities and facility‐level costs. Describes how recognition that cost may vary with something other than volume can make ABC a powerful tool for industrial marketers in three ways: yielding cost estimates to use in pricing that reflect significant differences among product specifications; providing the industrial marketer with guidance as to which product specifications may be adjusted in negotiations to yield significant cost reductions; and indicating areas in which to change company operations to yield cost reductions that will allow the company to satisfy customer wishes better.

Manufacturing firms are expected to implement green manufacturing and increase product complexity at a competitive price. However, a major problem for engineering managers is to ascertain the costs of embarking on green manufacturing. Thus, a planning and control methodology for costing of green manufacturing at the early design stage is important for engineering managers. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This paper integrates “green manufacturing,” concepts of industrial dynamics, and product lifecycle aiming at developing a methodology for cost calculation. The methodology comprises of a process-based cost model and a systems dynamics (SD) model. The process-based cost model focusses mainly on carbon emission costs and energy-saving activities. Important metrics usually ignored in traditional static modeling were incorporated using SD model.

Equipment costs and carbon emission costs are major components of costs in manufacturing. The total life cycle cost of product in green manufacturing is lower than that of same product in conventional manufacturing.

The specific results of this study are limited to the case company, but can hopefully contribute to further research on ascertaining cost of implementing “green issues” in manufacturing. The proposed cost calculation model can be efficiently applied in any manufacturing firm on the basis of accessibility of real cost data. This necessitates a comprehensive cost database. At the development of the model and database management system, time and cost resources could be demanding, but once installed, use of the model becomes less demanding.

The cost model provides cost justifications of implementing green manufacturing. The reality is that green manufacturing will see its development peak with cost justifications. The results of the application show that the proposed detailed cost model can be effective in ascertaining costs of implementing green manufacturing. Manufacturing firms are recommended to adopt energy-saving activities based on the proposed detailed cost calculation model.

The main contributions of the study includes: first, to help engineering managers more accurately understand how to allocate resources for energy-saving activities through appropriate cost drivers. Second, to simulate with SD the dynamic behavior of few important metrics, often ignored in traditional mathematical modeling. The detailed model provides a pre-manufacturing decision-making tool which will assist management in implementing green manufacturing by incorporating a life cycle assessment measurement into manufacturing cost management.

The purpose of this paper is to set out a methodological framework to investigate how the integration of an activity-based costing (ABC) logic into the pre-existent accounting system supports healthcare organizations in identifying the inefficiencies related to their diagnostic therapeutic pathways (DTP) and related reengineering interventions.

The BPM-ABC methodological framework has been applied to the case of a specific surgery pathway, at the Orthopaedic Division of a University Hospital in Italy.

The case-study described in the paper points out: first, how the Business Process Management (BPM)-ABC methodology is able to produce significant information about consumed resources and the costs of the activities, useful to highlight opportunities for DTPs improvement; second, the barriers related to a pre-existing accounting system based on cost centres that can hinder the implementation of the BPM-ABC model.

The case study points out the role of the ABC as a management tool for supporting decision-making processes. The ABC allows inferring information for two purposes. First, ABC supports a cost containment process as it allows highlighting the most cost-consuming activities and resources. Second, the ABC allows identifying reengineering paths, distinguishing between incremental and radical ones.

This study represents a remarkable reference raising the awareness of the pivotal role accounting systems play in the management of the organizational processes.

The current article aims to give an overview of how the new cost accounting models, such as activity‐based costing (ABC) and time‐driven activity‐based costing (TDABC) are researched and adapted by university libraries, focusing on the methods used for measuring work time allocation as well as on the strengths and weaknesses of both models.

The data used in this paper are based on reviewing and summarizing of relevant studies which were conducted in libraries inspired by the ideas of modern theoretical considerations and treatments relating to cost accounting and costing, originally developed for industry and private sector organizations.

The implementation of cost accounting systems in libraries has historically been treated as a technical innovation rather than an organizational or management innovation. The most important consideration is that librarians are not machines, which can be set at a given speed and expected to produce a uniform product. It turns out that the results of such research are largely affected by what methods are used to identify the time spent on activities and how well the management of libraries or researchers were able to explain to the staff the necessity for such research.

Besides the articles published so far dealing with the implementation of ABC and TDABC in libraries, no research or surveys focus on these issues from the perspective of employees.