[00:04.15]Text 10.1
[00:06.58]Factories run by numbers.Numbers to calculate profit and losses;to analyse the costs of new products;and to chart corporate strategy.
[00:17.68]But a lot of managers are relying on the wrong numbers.
[00:21.16]As they adopt new manufacturing techniques like computer-aided design,just-in-time stock management and total quality control,
[00:28.00]many firms are discovering that their existing accounting ssytems also need dragging into the 1990s.
[00:34.32]Unless the bean-counters join the manufacturing revolution,
[00:37.38]traditional cost accounting will have little place in the factory of the future.
[00:41.20]Companies use accounting in two main ways:financial accouting for shareholders,tax authorities and the like;
[00:47.31]and management accounting to help managers determine the costs of producing various products and to plan future investments.
[00:54.26]At a conference on strategic manufacturing,organised by the Strathclyde Institute in Scotland,
[00:59.45]the biggest beef was not about problems such as linking robots to computer-aided-design terminals.
[01:04.52]It was about management accounting.Companies complained that if they had relied on the traditional way in which cost accountants do their sums,
[01:13.14]they might not have been able to justify decisions to invest in new types of manufacturing at all.
[01:18.52]Why not?According to Mr Tracey O'Rourke of Rockwell International,an American conglomerate,
[01:24.51]traditional accounting methods lose relevance when applied to manufacturing systems which are flexible and re-usable.
[01:31.17]Since it tore up its cost-accounting rulebook,
[01:34.30]Rockwell's Allen-Bradley industrial-automation division reckons it has been able to make a bigger variety of electrical switches of higher quality and lower unit cost than its competitors.
[01:45.53]It does so in Milwaukee,not Malaysia.
[01:49.32]In Manchester,ICL,a once-crippled British computer company,makes minicomputers to order in ten days—four times faster than five years ago.
[02:00.06]Its plant is flexible enough to switch to making washing machines if ICL wants to.
[02:05.15]The firm's director of manufacturing, Mr Rod Powell,who is a qualified accountant,
[02:10.27]says that unless management accountants move fast,they will be almost without use to the manufacturing manager of 1995'.
[02:17.87]Where are accountants going wrong?Their fiercest critic,Professor Robert Kaplan of Harvard University,
[02:24.40]argues that today's costaccounting systems result in companies not knowing what individual proucts cost—or how to go about cutting costs.
[02:33.05]He says companies have become good at measuring the costs of labour and materials,but not those of other overheads.
[02:39.79]Traditionally,overhead costs are assigned to products in an arbitrary way.
[02:44.88]If a company uses 10% of its total labour to make a product,accountants often simply assign 10% of factory overheads to that product in order to determine its cost.
[02:55.73]This worked fine when companies produced a narrow range of products,and when the costs of labour and materials were the most important factors.
[03:04.66]These days,other costs make up a much bigger proportion of each product's value.Accountants do not know how to measure them.
[03:13.75]The same factory often produces a wide variety of products,each with a shortening life-cycle.
[03:20.36]Firms are using more bought-in,preassembled components.
[03:24.30]Overhead costs,especially in R & D,sales and marketing,have risen greatly in relation to labour costs.
[03:32.22]In the information-technology industry,ICL's Mr Powell estimates that labour costs have fallen from 20% of total product costs in 1970 to only 3% now.
[03:44.26]Costing the uncostable
[03:46.72]Many of the new manufacturing techniques have been borrowed or developed from Japan.
[03:51.89]Like western companies,Japanese firms keep an account of the flow of manufacturing costs in terms of labour,
[03:58.60]material and other overheads.But there are significant differences.
[04:03.62]Japanese accounting systems are used to motivate employees into producing products at a "target cost" and to reduce that cost over the lifetime of the product.
[04:13.86]The techniques used to do that can reshape a factory.
[04:17.70]The traditional way to ensure that a company gets the most out of its investment in a new machine is to measure how much it is used.
[04:25.38]That encourages supervisors to run the machine as fast and for as long as possible,
[04:30.29]building big batches of components.Common result:excess stocks.
[04:35.67]These days,most firms need to make things in smaller batches.
[04:40.29]Yesterday's sort of management accounting used to encourage presses in the car industry to continue to churn out body panels for four-door models,
[04:50.12]even while salesmen screamed for two-door versions.
[04:54.06]Today the best factories have machines that can be rapidly re-tooled to allow producers quickly to meet changes in demand.
[05:02.71]Across America,car plants are organising tool-changing contests to reduce,even by seconds,
[05:09.03]the time it takes to switch to making different components.
[05:12.84]What has this got to do with cost accounting?Faster machine-tool changes are among what Rockwell's Mr O'Rourke calls the "intangibles":
[05:22.87]reforms that have a huge value in the market,but are badly measured by internal accounting.
[05:28.96]Those intangibles also include:how better quality can boost market share;how product flexibility improves competitiveness;
[05:38.49]and how the ability to manufacture smaller batches with shorter delivery times leads to customer satisfaction.
[05:45.81]"What is needed",says Mr O'Rourke,"is a new accounting methodology which distinguishes between those items that add value and those that only add cost."
[05:56.02]Activity-based costing is one way forward.It means considering all of a company's activities—
[06:02.32]from logistics to marketing,distribution and administration—as product costs.
[06:08.14]It involves tracing the costs of each of these services to individual products.
[06:13.32]Firms need not abruptly abandon their existing accounting systems in favour of activity-based costing.
[06:19.66]Mr Kaplan says cheap,powerful personal computers let new accounting systems be developed for "strategic purposes",
[06:27.42]off-line from a company's financial accounting.
[06:30.50]Activity-based costing can produce shocks.Lucas Industries,once chiefly a widget-maker for British Leyland,
[06:38.13]is transforming itself into a producer of vehicle and aerospace "systems" with new manufacturing techniques.
[06:45.60]Lucas now makes things in "natural groups" with office and manufacturing workers teamed into "cells" and organised around the flow of materials and information.
[06:56.97]This makes it easier to trace costs to products.Lucas found a component worth less than $1 travelling an unnecessary 20,000 miles—
[07:07.96]including several trips to and from California—before it had any value added to it.
[07:14.16]The company is also making increased use of computer-integrated manufacturing(CIM).
[07:19.72]In theorty,a CIM plant can integrate not just the production process,but also administration,
[07:27.16]product design,market research—and accountancy.A CIM plant could provide costing information faster than an accountant could blink.
[07:39.47]Text 10.2 From information processing to accounting syste
[07:45.84]Accounting systems are just one means of processing information in organisation
[07:50.67]Since they are concerned with the management of financial resources and the representation of other aspects of the business in financial term
[07:57.99]they will always be important
[08:00.03]But it must never be forgotten that an accounting system is always a means to a wider organisational end rather than an end in itsel
[08:08.67]Accordingly, the strategy for designing and operating any type of accounting system must reflect the wider purposes of the organisation which are to be served
[08:17.82]the other strategies for control which management has adopted and their implications for information processing, and thereby the internal distribution of power and influenc
[08:28.84]It is perhaps easier to take a partial view when designing accounting systems for enterprises operating in relatively stable condition
[08:36.83]But with dynamic and rapidly changing conditions, when the information needed to make decisions is more fluid and complex
[08:43.91]a wider organisational viewpoint is absolutely essentia
[08:48.27]In such circumstances, accounting systems and their organisational premises need to be consistent with the forms of organisational structure and patterns of reponsibility which can cope with the inherent uncertainty and provide the necessary element of adaptivenes
[09:03.84]They must aim to reinforce the informal communication networks and the patterns of interpersonal relationship
[09:10.61]which constitute the more organic means of control
[09:13.64]Finally they must try to elicit the appropriate individual motivation
[09:18.55]If ,however, these objectives really cannot be achieved, then the current limitations on our ability to design accounting systems,real as they ar
[09:27.12]may need to be recognised as constraints on management's ability to adopt other means of contro
[09:33.75]Such a view presents many challenges to members of the accounting professio
[09:37.78]particularly those concerned with the design and operation of management accounting system
[09:42.61]Accoutants need, for instance, to give a lot more consideration to the design of formal information systems that are consistent with organisational structures which emphasise horizaontal rather than vertical forms of contro
[09:56.53]At present ,many accounting techniques and procedures are more consistent with the organisational forms associated with mechanistic or bureaucratic approaches to management than they are with organic approache
[10:08.50]Progress has undoubtedly been made in this area in the last few years ,but as yet,many difficult problems remain to be solve
[10:16.02]Whilst the management accountant can never become responsible for the management of all information flow
[10:22.08]as one of the few specialists on information in most enterpirses,he has ,I believe ,the potential of broadening his concerns to cover at least the design of the formal sources of informatio
[10:32.95]if not a more general overview of the information processing capabilities of the enterpirs
[10:38.20]Of course ,such a reorientation would necessitate major changes in outlook and training ,and in realit
[10:45.36]I remain pessimistic about whether the profession, as distinct from some of its more informed members,is likely to change in this wa
[10:53.92]But the need is real enoug
[10:56.07]Indeed, it may be so real that one wonders whether some other group will arise to move in this direction if accountants choose not to do s
[11:04.11]Conclusi
[11:05.31]It is useful to end our discussion by briefly considering the resemblance which the accountant's task as designer of information systems might bear to that of the architect.
[11:15.29]Both professional groups are concerned with designing and constructing structures which are meant to serve human needs,
[11:22.03]and in doing this,they both tend to be more concerned with how things might be rather than how things necessarily are.
[11:30.23]The similarity might,however,go further.For accountants,like architects,can become involved with the technicalities
[11:36.84]and aesthetics of their edifices to the detriment of the needs of the people who will be using them.
[11:42.54]We can all think of the equivalent in accounting of the architect whose ideas of civilised order have little relationship to what the citizens of actual cities really want.
[11:52.86]It does not require too much imagination to picture the equivalents of those idealistic planners whose efforts have yielded only vandalism and personal isolation.
[12:02.57]Like architects,accountants must never regard human beings as unsolicited intrusions on their technical activities.
[12:09.84]It should not be forgotten that these technical activities have of themselves no meaning.
[12:15.37]Accounting systems must always be directed towards fulfilling the needs of the managers and employees who are striving to control complex but purposeful enterprises,
[12:25.43]and accordingly,their design and operation always needs a sensitivity to the attitudes,needs and even passions of the human members of the enterprise. |