Accountability for results is key to the long-term success of target costing. A tiered-team approach appears to be a particularly effective technique for managing and implementing target costing. In this tiered approach, a higher-level team oversees the entire project and is supported by a number of other teams that meet regularly and execute and implement the target costing process within the organization and the supply base. These meetings include top management, and explicitly review current cost estimate compared to targets. All costs in excess of targets must be explained, and an action plan must be under way to eliminate those excesses. The supply management person who sits on the high level or program team has responsibility for overseeing purchasing’s activities in support of target costing. These activities are generally executed by a number of buyers interfacing with a number of suppliers and internal cross-disciplinary teams.
While this study indicates that marketing and research tend to have primary responsibility for determining the target selling price to the end customer, supply management becomes involved in working with accounting and calculating the target costs on a component or material level. The methods used by supply management vary but tend to be based on historical cost patterns, research of current market conditions and technology, the competitive environment, and, in some cases, simple regression or correlation models of past cost behavior. The costs are often calculated as a joint effort among several functions. Among the manufacturing organizations studied, it is particularly important that supply management maintains a close working relationship with design engineers/R&D. This relationship is critical to the target costing effort, because design drives the supplier requirements, which in turn drives cost and has a direct impact on the ability of a product or service to meet the target cost. In order to work closely with the technical groups, supply management must understand and be able to communicate in technical language. In most cases, those in supply management did not have a technical background but were able to learn from experience and interest.