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This study aims to develop an optimal tolerance allocation strategy involves integrating the unique transfer (UT) approach and the difficulty coefficient evaluation (DCE) routine in an interactive hybrid method. This method combines the strengths of both UT and DCE, ensuring simultaneous utilization for enhanced performance. The proposed tolerancing model manifests an integrated computer-aided design (CAD) tool.

By combining UT and DCE based on failure mode, effects and criticality analysis (FMECA) tool and the Ishikawa diagram, the proposed collaborative hybrid tool ensures an efficient and optimal tolerance allocation approach. The integration of these methodologies not only addresses specific transfer challenges through UT but also conducts a thorough evaluation of difficulty coefficients via DCE routine using reliability analysis tools as FMECA tool and the Ishikawa diagram. This comprehensive framework contributes to a robust and informed decision-making process in tolerance allocation, ultimately optimizing the design and manufacturing processes.

The presented methodology is implemented with the aim of generating allocated tolerances that align with specific difficulty requirements, facilitating the creation of a mechanical assembly characterized by high quality and low cost. To substantiate and validate the conceptual framework and methods, an integrated tool has been developed, featuring a graphical user interface (GUI) designed in MATLAB. This interface serves as a platform to showcase various interactive and integrated tolerance allocation approaches that adhere to both functional and manufacturing prerequisites. The proposed integrated tool, designed with a GUI in MATLAB, offers the capability to execute various examples that effectively demonstrate the benefits of the developed tolerance transfer and allocation methodology.

The originality of the proposed approach is the twining between the UT and DCE simultaneous in an integrated and concurrent tolerance transfer and allocation model. Therefore, the proposed approach is named an integrated CAD/tolerance model based on the manufacturing difficulty tool. The obtained results underscore the tangible advantages stemming from the integration of this innovative tolerance transfer and allocation approach. These benefits include a notable reduction in total cost and a concurrent enhancement in product quality.

The deciding factor for operating a governmental project either as an independent, self-supporting municipal enterprise insulated from political influence or as a special revenue fund financed by tax levies is whether the amount of revenue generated covers the operating costs of the project. Cost allocation issues play an important role in this decision since the development of an acceptable user charge requires calculations of the full-cost per unit of service. If not properly understood and applied, these issues can produce unfair rates, which in turn may lead to wars between the city government and the communities it serves.

To understand the role of cost allocation in developing fair rates for a municipal enterprise's services, this article selects the most common public unity, the municipal water and sewer services, in particular, the Detroit Water and Sewer Department (DWSD). DWSD is one of the largest municipal enterprises in the United States and many of its pricing practices are typical of those followed by many cities in the United States. After presenting and illustrating the current DWSD's cost allocation and pricing procedures to highlight the unfair pricing incidents, the article proposes a modification to the current system that avoids these unfair pricing issues.

In the context of sharing economy and online shopping, establishing a stable urban joint distribution alliance (JDA) is extremely necessary for the entire logistics service market. The purpose of this paper is to rationally allocate the profits and determine the most stable allocation scheme for the urban JDA as well as provide a direction for cooperation between express enterprises and lead managers to pay more attention to the comprehensive performance.

Cooperative game-based methodologies including the proportion method, the core theory, nucleolus and Shapley value have been employed. Four criteria consisting of enterprise operation, customer satisfaction, environmental sustainability and information technology have been incorporated into Shapley value for improvement.

This paper reveals that express enterprises in logistics service market can achieve more benefit from JDA than those who operate separately. Among proposed profit allocation schemes, improved Shapley value scheme shows more rationality by considering partners’ asymmetric contribution. Besides, a stable alliance can be always ensured with partners’ lower propensity to disrupt and relatively balanced negotiation power under improved Shapley value scheme.

This paper makes a few attempts to contribute to the literature on the improvement of Shapley value and applies the concept of “propensity to disrupt” into the field of logistics. Besides, this paper provides various profit allocation schemes and incorporates influencing factors into Shapley value for an improvement thus helping policy-makers make better-informed decisions on urban distribution. Additionally, a case study based on urban express enterprises in Southwest China has been conducted to verify the proposed profit allocation schemes.

The purpose of this paper is to present the use of activity-based costing (ABC) approach as an alternative option to the traditional cost accounting system. The contribution of this study is to demonstrate, through a simple example, the application of that costing system in a service (maintenance) industry, i.e. the paper intended to develop a procedure for a cost model that help in calculating any maintenance job cost, to a reasonable degree of accuracy, based on the actual activities performed.

This research uses a simple example whereby hypothetical activities and cost data of maintaining an injector and a pump, of an internal combustion engine, are used, presented and analyzed based on the use of the developed procedure.

ABC system provides more accurate cost estimates rather than the traditional “order costing” methods that uses unit-level costs which are variable in relation to change in service volume. Traditional cost methods distort the costs by applying overhead uniformly over different jobs of varied complexities and activities scope. On the other hand, ABC is a useful means to distribute the overhead costs in proportion (fairly) to the actual activities performed in a specific job and, hence, enhance the rationality of decision making, i.e. will not distort the accounting information used for cost reduction, pricing, and evaluation matters. The results obtained from the analysis showed that allocating costs to the maintained injector decreased from $83.55 to $71.95 and, finally, to $67.57 when using the workshop-wide, two-stage and ABC overhead allocation methods, respectively; while that of the pump increased from $298.90 to $340.34 and, finally, to $359.48 when using the same three methods, in the same order, respectively. The result is quite fair when considering the complexity of the fuel pump, in terms of design and maintenance, when compared with the injector. Notice that using volume to allocate overhead costs results in over costing high-volume products, e.g. injectors (simple in terms of design and operation) and under costing low-volume products, e.g. pumps (more complex in terms of design and operation). The paper recommends to use ABC as a more accurate and fair method when charging maintenance job orders based on the analysis of costing two maintained items in the same premise while consuming different overhead resources.

This study attempts to analyze different methods to calculate a specific corrective maintenance job order. It strives to remedy the drawbacks of the traditional overhead costing of a job order when using principles related to the size of service, such as the direct labor cost/hours, as an allocation base. Consequently, the study proposed a new costing method, i.e. application of ABC. The traditional costing approach is considered by many firms as the best costing method. Nevertheless, it allocates overhead cost over job performed uniformly (equally) not differentiating between the complexity of the job and variety of the activities performed, e.g. using the same allocation base for “oil change” and “fuel pump adjustment” activities. So, ABC prevents cost distortions (unfairness) that could not be prevented by traditional cost accounting system. The author believes that the method presented in this paper will provide a useful management tool for costing maintenance jobs based on the appropriate selected activity drivers in maintenance workshops. The method could be applied for costing maintenance activities in maintenance of all industrial sectors.

The use of traditional costing method has proven to be distorted by applying overhead uniformly over different jobs of varied complexities and activities scope. In this paper the authors strive to present an effective costing alternative that outperforms the traditional ones with regard to overhead allocation. The paper aims to find reliable and fair maintenance costing method, i.e. to find out the relationships between maintenance activities and cost drivers. Although, ABC is widely used in manufacturing industry, no application or current research has presented an applicable thorough worked-out example, with the exception, to the author’s knowledge, of one in the aeronautical industry, to implement ABC method in maintenance industry. The importance of using this method comes from the fact that it provides, relatively, accurate and fair maintenance bills that provide customer satisfaction and firm good image. Hence, the paper is relevant in this respect and intended to contribute to the practice of maintenance management.

This paper provides a review and synthesis of past research regarding financial disclosure management by nongovernmental nonprofit organizations and suggests directions for future study. The primary purpose of this review is to summarize the evidence on financial disclosure management to help regulators and other stakeholders understand why, how, and to what extent nonprofits engage in this behavior. The paper begins by defining disclosure management in nonprofit organizations and exploring the motivations for why it might occur. Next is a survey of the nongovernmental nonprofit financial reporting environment: objectives, common practices, and the informational needs of users of nonprofit financial reports. Research exploring the motives, methods, and consequences of disclosure management is summarized. The evidence suggests that nongovernmental nonprofit managers have a variety of incentives to manage reported numbers and that they do in fact alter spending decisions, choose accounting methods, and design cost allocations to achieve certain performance benchmarks. Furthermore, this review sheds light on the consequences of disclosure management and what can or should be done to limit it.

The purpose of this paper is to establish a tolerance optimization method based on manufacturing difficulty computation using the genetic algorithm (GA) method. This proposal is among the authors’ perspectives of accomplished previous research work to cooperative optimal tolerance allocation approach for concurrent engineering area.

This study introduces the proposed GA modeling. The objective function of the proposed GA is to minimize total cost constrained by the equation of functional requirements tolerances considering difficulty coefficients. The manufacturing difficulty computation is based on tools for the study and analysis of reliability of the design or the process, as the failure mode, effects and criticality analysis (FMECA) and Ishikawa diagram.

The proposed approach, based on difficulty coefficient computation and GA optimization method [genetic algorithm optimization using difficulty coefficient computation (GADCC)], has been applied to mechanical assembly taken from the literature and compared to previous methods regarding tolerance values and computed total cost. The total cost is the summation of manufacturing cost and quality loss. The proposed approach is economic and efficient that leads to facilitate the manufacturing of difficult dimensions by increasing their tolerances and reducing the rate of defect parts of the assembly.

The originality of this new optimal tolerance allocation method is to make a marriage between GA and manufacturing difficulty. The computation of part dimensions difficulty is based on incorporating FMECA tool and Ishikawa diagram This comparative study highlights the benefits of the proposed GADCC optimization method. The results lead to obtain optimal tolerances that minimize the total cost and respect the functional, quality and manufacturing requirements.

Studies involving the allocation of funds among local governments usually are broad in nature with foci based on a variety of factors ranging from service demand to performance outcomes. The conundrum of indirect costs allocation associated with service demand continues to confront local governments. The internal service fund (ISF) has been the primary device used in this endeavor, but over the past two decades, its utilization has decreased. County finance officers in the southeastern United States were surveyed to determine why the ISF is not as prevalently used as in previous years and what has happened to indirect costs as a result of these changes. Findings suggest many reasons for ISF's usage decline including limited usefulness and reallocation of indirect costs to departments. In addition, county governments with a cost allocation plan and larger budget sizes continue to use the ISF as an accounting device

The reciprocal method for allocating support department costs is preferred over the direct and step-down methods because it captures all support services provided to other departments. However, even as business organizations increase the number of support departments and their costs, the adoption of the reciprocal method has been hindered by mathematical difficulties in solving simultaneous equations. This paper illustrates spreadsheet matrix functions that remove the difficulties associated with the reciprocal method. The algebraic expressions for reciprocated costs commonly presented in accounting textbooks are used to form an equivalent matrix relationship. Then spreadsheet matrix functions easily compute reciprocated costs for support departments from the matrix relationship, and also allocate the reciprocated costs to other departments.

Optimum allocation of resources is today's means of designing a logistic network to deal with tomorrow's demands. Accepting this and in order to ensure that a logistic network is being managed efficiently, it is argued that it is essential to look at what is now achievable, given the advances in computer technology and Artificial Intelligence. The parameters necessary for each market segment in the resource allocation process are defined and the characteristics and problems of data describing the parameters encountered in practice are presented.

Optimum allocation of resources is today′s means of designing a logistic network to deal with tomorrow′s demands. Accepting this and in order to ensure that a logistic network is being managed efficiently, it is argued that it is essential to look at what is now achievable, given the advances in computer technology and Artificial Intelligence. The parameters necessary for each market segment in the resource allocation process are defined and the characteristics and problems of data describing the parameters encountered in practice are presented.