第三方物流企業(yè)的作業(yè)成本法【外文翻譯】

1、本科畢業(yè)論文（設(shè)計(jì)）外 文 翻 譯外文出處 international advances in economic research, 2001,7(1): 133-146. 外文作者 carles gríful-miquela 原文：activity-based costing methodology for third-party logistics companiesthis paper will analyze the main costs that third-party logistics companies are facing and develops an activ

2、ity-based costing methodology useful for this kind of company. it will examine the most important activities carried out by third-party distributors in both warehousing and transporting activities. however, the focus is mainly on the activity of distributing the product to the final receiver when th

3、is final receiver is not the customer of the third-party logistics company. introduction in the last decade, development of third-party logistics companies has been very important. there are several reasons for such development, the most important being the trend to concentrate in the core business

4、by manufacturing companies and new technological advances, in this context, conventional approaches to costing might generate distorted information, this can result in making wrong decisions. when companies realize this potential danger, the use of activity-based costing (abc) methodologies increase

5、s within third-party logistics. costing methodology: definition of the cost model and critique of the conventional approach definition of the cost model it is first necessary to define what a cost model is. this can be done through analysis of the main functions that any cost model should perform ka

6、plan and cooper, 1998: 1) valuation of inventory and measurement of the cost of goods and services sold for financial purposes; 2) estimation of the cost of activities, products, services, and customers; and 3) provide economic feedback to managers and staff in general about process efficiency. from

7、 this definition, a cost model might be analyzed as the tool that companies use in order to have a proper understanding about the cost to run their businesses. one of the purposes of a cost model is to gather and analyze data generated in the company in order to gain useful information for making de

8、cisions. therefore, the usefulness of a cost model may be evaluated depending on its capacity to generate the right information to make the right managerial decisions. evolution of cost models the evolution of cost systems has not been a linear and continuous process johnson and kaplan, 1987. indeed

9、, by the 1920s, companies had developed almost all the management accounting procedures that have been used up to the present day. furthermore, between 1925 and 1980, virtually no new ideas have affected the design and use of cost management systems. the same concepts always appear: break-even analy

10、sis, cost-volume-profit analysis, direct costing, and fixed and variable cost estimates. the idea that conventional accounts are only finance oriented and simply describe historical inputs is shared among other authors of costing methodology bellis- jones and develin, 1995. problems with conventiona

11、l approaches as a result of the described evolution of cost models, the situation at the beginning of the 1980s was that the actual management accounting systems provided few benefits to organizations. normally, the reported information not only inhibited good decision making by managers, but actual

12、ly encouraged bad decisions johnson and kaplan, 1987. the main reason was the use of an obsolete tool in an extremely different and more complex and competitive environment. the main problem that conventional cost models faced was the allocation of overhead by products on the basis of either direct

13、labor or machine hour content in the manufacturing environment. this problem was growing at the same time that direct labor and machine hour contents of many products and services fell, while overhead costs increased. conventional costing ignores important differences between products and services,

14、markets and customers, which incur different overhead costs. this was the starting point in carefully analyzing the conventional cost models and in criticizing them because of their uselessness in accurately explaining the cost of products. lately, the fact that the same issues apply to the service

15、sector has been noticed. traditional methods of cost accounting showed some other weaknesses bellis-jones and develin, 1995. that is, companies do not know whether their products or services are profitable and they cannot distinguish profitable from unprofitable customers. in addition, traditional m

16、ethods focus on the short term at the expense of the long term. a description of abc methodology the problems that conventional costing methodologies raised were the main reason for developing a new theoretical approach to this subject. johnson and kaplan are considered the inventors of abc, althoug

17、h they do not use this terminology at the beginning of their studies johnson and kaplan, 1987. the first time the concept of abc appears is in a later article cooper and kaplan, 1988. the analysis of cost and profitability of individual products, services, and customers represents a critical issue t

18、hat companies were concerned with and one where abc tries to help. the primary focus was to ask what is important for the organization, and what information is needed for management planning and control functions. finally, useful information for managerial purposes should not be extracted only from

19、a system designed primarily to satisfy external reporting and auditing requirements (financial information). it is necessary to design systems consistent with the technology of the organization, its product strategy, and its organizational structure. definition of abc in literature there are several

20、 definitions of abc. the definition here shows the abc philosophy hicks, 1992 briefly and clearly: "activity-based costing is a cost accounting concept based on the premise that products (and/or services) require an organization to perform activities and that those activities require an organiz

21、ation to incur costs. in activity-based costing, systems are designed so that any costs that cannot be attributed directly to a product, flow into the activities that make them necessary. the cost of each activity then flows to the product(s) that make the activity necessary based on their respectiv

22、e consumption of that activity." main differences between conventional cost models and abc the most important difference between conventional cost models and abc is the treatment of non-volume-related overhead costs. the use of direct labor-based overhead allocation methods were appropriate in

23、the past when direct labor was the principal component of manufacturing cost, but not today. in the abc approach, many overheads are related to specific activities to avoid distortions in product and service costs. another difference is the treatment of unused capacity. abc describes resources that

24、are used by activities, but conventional accounts describe resources that are supplied. the difference between the two is excess capacity. if excess capacity is allocated to products, services, or customers, there is risk of a "dead spiral," as defined by bellis-jones and develin 1995. thi

25、s means that the company should be aware of which costs their customers really generate and not allocate the excess of capacity to avoid the risk of overpricing its products or services. advantages and benefits of the abc approach several authors have described the main advantages and benefits of us

26、ing abc innes and mitchell, 1990; bellis-jones and develin, 1995; malmi, 1997. the most important are as follows: 1) abc provides more accurate product and service costing, particularly where non- volume-related overheads are significant. 2) by using abc, it is possible to analyze costs by areas of

27、managerial responsibility and customers. abc helps to recognize the way in which customers directly affect the cost structure of the business and therefore helps to analyze customer profitability. 3) abc provides a better understanding of cost behavior as well as identifying the costs of complexity,

28、 variety, and change inherent in both the kind of service offered and customer-specific requirements. 4) abc focuses on the activities that add value, which are those activities that create value from the customer's point of view. on the other hand, the company should focus on those non-value-ad

29、ded activities and try to eliminate them, although some of the non-value-added activities are necessary to enable value-adding activities to occur. 5) abc is useful in performing capacity analysis. abc measures the costs of resources used rather than the costs of resources supplied, the difference b

30、eing excess capacity. it would be wrong to allocate unused capacity to the customers. to perform this analysis, the use of practical capacity is suggested, which means the capacity reflecting the maximum level at which the organization can operate efficiently. 6) abc reduces uncertainty and provides

31、 a more solid basis for strategic decisions. therefore, the success of abc might not depend only on the results of the analysis, but on its ability to provide a correct diagnosis of the company's situation.disadvantages and problems of the abc approach the disadvantages extracted from a study ba

32、sed on the answers of several companies after one year of using abc cobb et al., 1992 regarded the amount of work involved, difficulties in collecting accurate data, and the fact that cost management was difficult because several activities cross department boundaries. additionally, implementation i

33、s very time consuming, requiring not only gathering and processing of data, but also interpreting the results. even though all of the former problems have been overcome with the development of abc methodology and the increase in using abc models by companies in different manufacturing and service in

34、dustries, it is always necessary to be aware of these problems when developing such a model. abc for logistics even though literature mentions that abc applies to all types of business organizations in the service industry, including warehousing and distribution providers hicks, 1992, the author cou

35、ld not specifically find the case of a third-party logistics provider as far as the transport operations are concerned. the main issue is to properly allocate the transport operations costs to the consignors, which are the real customers of the company.4 furthermore, in the literature about transpor

36、tation costs sussams, 1992, the customer is always the final consignee, and the costs are always an external variable. in recent years and because of the increasing importance of logistics costs within companies, the first studies analyzing the utility of the activity-based approach on logistics wer

37、e undertaken pohlen and lalonde, 1994; lalonde and ginter, 1996; lalonde and pohlen, 1996. the main benefits and difficulties related to the implementation of abc for logistics departments are almost the same as those described earlier. analysis of overheads the analysis of overheads is the least ob

38、vious and the most complicated to perform. normally, overheads are related to several activities (or nonactivities), and it is necessary to carry out in-depth studies during long periods of time in order to find out the right links between overheads and products, services, or customers. for this rea

39、son, the recommendation is to be as accurate as possible in order to link overheads with consignors, avoiding the traditional approach to link, in the first instance, overheads with activities. this is very important when there is an important lack of time for developing such a costing methodology,

40、despite the fact that this is not a pure abc approach. the need to cope with overheads appears on both the warehouse and transport side of the model. conclusion it is very difficult (and not always recommended) to develop a pure abc model because the particular characteristics of a single third-part

41、y logistics company entailed the use of slightly different ways to allocate several costs in some instances, which a purely abc approach would not be able to do. despite this fact, the final model for both sides of the third-party company operations (warehouse and transport operations) has been main

42、ly described by taking abc analysis into account. only when abc does not present an answer to a specific problem should another way be considered to allocate the costs. it is recommended that such a model should be developed by using a spreadsheet because it fulfills the needs of the company, it is

43、a very powerful tool, and it is also very user-friendly. furthermore, the model developed may be capable of performing what-if analysis in order to simulate actual or potential situations the third-party company might face. these what-if analyses may be used in different ways such as in the analysis

44、 of potential consignors, in the requirement of different service levels by the current consignors, and to perform the analysis of structural changes in the third-party logistics company. finally, note that the costs of the model should not exceed its benefits. in other words, it is necessary to cop

45、e with the trade-off between a model that is so simple that it fails toprovide enough information to support the company's decisions and a model that is excessively costly to design, implement, and operate brimson, 1991. this should always be taken into account, trying to achieve a happy medium

46、between simplicity and excessive sophistication. source: carles gríful-miquela.activity-based costing methodology for third-party logistics companiesj.international advances in economic research, 2001,7(1): 133-146.譯文：第三方物流企業(yè)的作業(yè)成本法本文將分析第三方物流企業(yè)面臨的主要成本問題并開發(fā)出適合于這一類企業(yè)的成本計(jì)算方法。在文中將會(huì)探討所進(jìn)行的最重要的第三方分銷商進(jìn)行

47、倉儲(chǔ)和運(yùn)輸活動(dòng)過程中的業(yè)務(wù)處理。不過,重點(diǎn)是主要的產(chǎn)品運(yùn)輸?shù)阶罱K的接收者時(shí),這個(gè)接收者卻不是第三方物流企業(yè)的顧客時(shí)的情況。引言在過去的十年里,第三方物流企業(yè)的發(fā)展一直很重要。原因有幾個(gè),最重要的是發(fā)展的趨勢(shì)集中在制造企業(yè)的技術(shù)進(jìn)步和新的核心業(yè)務(wù),在此背景下,傳統(tǒng)的成本計(jì)算方法可能產(chǎn)生歪曲的信息,這可能導(dǎo)致做出錯(cuò)誤的決定。當(dāng)公司意識(shí)到這一潛在危險(xiǎn)時(shí),作業(yè)成本方法在第三方物流企業(yè)的應(yīng)用就會(huì)增加。成本計(jì)算方法:成本模式的定義和對(duì)傳統(tǒng)方法的批判成本模式的定義首先要定義什么樣的成本模型。這可以通過分析一些運(yùn)行成本模式的主要功能來實(shí)現(xiàn)（卡普蘭和庫珀,1998):1)存貨的估價(jià)和為金融目的出售商品和服務(wù)的成

48、本計(jì)量；2)業(yè)務(wù)、產(chǎn)品、服務(wù)和顧客的成本估算；3)提供經(jīng)濟(jì)反饋給在工作中做的好的管理者和員工。從這個(gè)定義可以看出,成本模型可以作為分析工具,以便能對(duì)企業(yè)經(jīng)營成本進(jìn)行更好的管理。成本模型的其中一個(gè)目的是對(duì)公司的數(shù)據(jù)進(jìn)行集中和分析從而為決策者提供有用的信息。因此,成本的有效性評(píng)估模型可以根據(jù)其能產(chǎn)生正確的信息,做出正確的管理決策。成本模型的演變成本系統(tǒng)的演變還沒有一個(gè)線性和持續(xù)的過程（約翰遜和卡普蘭，1987年）事實(shí)上,到了二十世紀(jì)二十年代,企業(yè)已開發(fā)出了幾乎所有的管理會(huì)計(jì)程序，并沿用至今。此外,1925到1980年之間，幾乎沒有新的觀念來影響成本管理系統(tǒng)的設(shè)計(jì)和使用?？偸浅霈F(xiàn)相同的概念:盈虧平衡

49、分析,本量力分析、直接成本以及固定和可變成本的預(yù)算。在其他作者的成本理念中普遍認(rèn)為傳統(tǒng)會(huì)計(jì)只是財(cái)務(wù)帳目和簡單描述歷史數(shù)據(jù)輸入（bellis- jones and develin, 1995)。傳統(tǒng)方法存在的問題由于成本模型描述演化的結(jié)果, 在20世紀(jì)80年代初的實(shí)際情況是，管理會(huì)計(jì)系統(tǒng)為企業(yè)提供了很少的利益。通常情況下,報(bào)告的信息不僅抑制了管理者制定好的決策,而且還支持錯(cuò)誤的決定（約翰遜和卡普蘭1987年）。主要的原因是在一個(gè)完全不同的、更復(fù)雜和激烈的競爭環(huán)境中使用過時(shí)的工具。傳統(tǒng)成本模式面臨的主要問題是在制造環(huán)境中，產(chǎn)品開銷的分配是基于直接勞動(dòng)還是工時(shí)計(jì)量。同時(shí)還增加了這樣的問題,許多產(chǎn)品和

50、服務(wù)的直接勞動(dòng)力和機(jī)器工時(shí)減少,而管理費(fèi)用卻增加了。傳統(tǒng)的成本忽略了在產(chǎn)品與服務(wù)、市場與客戶之間的重要區(qū)別,而這些都會(huì)產(chǎn)生不同的管理費(fèi)用。這是仔細(xì)分析和批評(píng)傳統(tǒng)成本模型的起點(diǎn),因?yàn)樗麄儾荒軠?zhǔn)確解釋產(chǎn)品的成本。最近,同樣的問題也出現(xiàn)在了服務(wù)部門并已引起重視。傳統(tǒng)的成本會(huì)計(jì)方法也顯示出了一些其他方面的不足（bellis-jones develin,1995)。那就是,公司不知道它們的產(chǎn)品或服務(wù)是否是盈利的,而且他們不能分辨出哪些顧客是有利可圖的。此外,傳統(tǒng)方法是把注意力集中在短期項(xiàng)目和長期項(xiàng)目的費(fèi)用上。abc法的描述傳統(tǒng)成本方法增加的問題是發(fā)展一種全新的理論方法的主要原因。約翰遜和卡普蘭被認(rèn)為是a

51、bc法的發(fā)明家,雖然他們?cè)谠缙诘难芯恐袥]有使用到這個(gè)術(shù)語 （約翰遜，卡普蘭，1987）。第一次abc的概念出現(xiàn)是在后來的文章里（庫珀，卡普蘭，1988）。個(gè)人產(chǎn)品、服務(wù)和顧客的成本和收益的分析代表著一個(gè)關(guān)鍵問題，公司所看重的部分及abc最能起作用的地方。主要的焦點(diǎn)是詢問對(duì)于公司來說什么是重要的, 管理計(jì)劃和控制功能需要什么樣的信息。最后, 管理目的的有用信息不應(yīng)該只從一個(gè)主要是旨在滿足對(duì)外報(bào)告和審計(jì)要求(金融信息)的系統(tǒng)中提取，而應(yīng)該設(shè)計(jì)一個(gè)符合企業(yè)的技術(shù)、產(chǎn)品戰(zhàn)略以及組織結(jié)構(gòu)的系統(tǒng)。abc法的定義在文獻(xiàn)中有幾種abc的定義。在這里簡要清楚地闡述了abc法的定義(hicks,1992):“作業(yè)

52、成本法是一種以作業(yè)為基礎(chǔ)的成本會(huì)計(jì)理念，是以產(chǎn)品(或服務(wù))在活動(dòng)中會(huì)消耗作業(yè),而這些作業(yè)又會(huì)產(chǎn)生成本為前提的。在作業(yè)成本法下,系統(tǒng)的設(shè)計(jì)是為了不讓任何成本直接導(dǎo)向產(chǎn)品，而是流入必要的活動(dòng)，每一項(xiàng)活動(dòng)的成本再流入到產(chǎn)品,這使得活動(dòng)需要根據(jù)其各自的消費(fèi)來進(jìn)行計(jì)算?！眰鹘y(tǒng)的成本模型與abc法的差異傳統(tǒng)成本模型與abc法最大的不同在于非批量相關(guān)的間接費(fèi)用處理方法上。以直接勞動(dòng)力為基礎(chǔ)的分配開銷方法的使用在過去是合適的，那時(shí)直接勞動(dòng)是生產(chǎn)成本的組成部分，但現(xiàn)在不是了。在abc法下,許多費(fèi)用涉及具體活動(dòng)，以避免產(chǎn)品和服務(wù)成本的扭曲。另一個(gè)區(qū)別是閑置能力的處理。abc描述的是在活動(dòng)中使用過的資源,而傳統(tǒng)會(huì)計(jì)描述的是已經(jīng)供應(yīng)的資源。兩者的區(qū)別是產(chǎn)能過剩。根據(jù)bellis-jones和develin的說法（1995）,如果產(chǎn)能過剩是分配給產(chǎn)品、服務(wù)、或客戶,這就存在“死亡螺旋” 的風(fēng)險(xiǎn)。這意味著該公司應(yīng)當(dāng)意識(shí)到其中客戶真正產(chǎn)生費(fèi)用的分配，而不是能力過剩，以避免過高的產(chǎn)品或服務(wù)的風(fēng)險(xiǎn)。abc法的優(yōu)勢(shì)與效益一些作者已經(jīng)描述了使用abc法的主要的優(yōu)勢(shì)和效益（innes and mitchell, 1990； bellis-jones and develin,