ApplicationExample
In this section the overhead costs of a typical small manufacturing firm are traced using the proposed methodology. The example uses the average of actual costs tabulated from several small-manufacturing companies to represent the costs of a ‘typical’ small business enterprise. Moreover, this approach also preserves the anonymity of the companies.
Tool & Die Inc. is a small manufacturing company in Western Pennsylvania that manufactures three main products and supplies to multiple customers. On- going engineering work is prominent because of the use of CNC machines to manufacture products. Ten main customers are responsible for more than 80 percent of the total business. Since its foundation 20 years ago, the Tool & Die Inc. has growth by adding three to five new employees per year. Currently, its total work force is nearly one hundred employees. Despite the growth in company size and business volume, the profitability has declined during the last few years. In the last two years, the company experienced losses for the first time in its history. Management believes that costing by intuition or by applying traditional methods is no longer appropriate. Therefore, they decided to introduce an ABC costing system to the company. Because the data required for the ABC system does not already exist and the cost to collect all of it would be prohibitive for this firm, management decided to use educated guesses, systematic appraisal, and actual data.
The initial step was to examine the expense categories included in the income statement of Average Inc and to select cost drivers. Exhibit 2 shows this breakdown. In the second step, Tool & Die Inc. identified its main activities and their respective second stage cost drivers as shown in Exhibit 3. Exhibit 4 illustrates a hierarchical tree relating expense categories, activities and products. The third step determined which activities contributed to each expense category. For example, the activities contributing to the expense category “Transport” are material receiving and product shipment.