Development of real-time product cost measurement: A case study in a medium-sized manufacturing company

Data availability and the need for updating are important considerations when designing product costing systems. This paper describes the development of a costing system in a medium sized company to better understand these issues. The company wanted to be able to assess profitability of products on a more comprehensive basis than the contribution margins of products, which included merely the direct material costs. The resulting system uses practical capacity to compute rates and is based on a hybrid of machining and labor times. The most innovative aspect is the use of real-time data on machine times in manufacturing, in the context of a large number and frequently changing products. The study also helps to better understand the limitations of time-driven activity-based costing (TDABC), and it highlights the role of “data discovery” for the design of costing systems.