Toyota Target Costing Essay Example

Toyota Target Costing Essay Quality cost measurement under activity-based costing Wen-Hsien Tsai National Central University, Chung-Li, Taiwan, Republic of China Introduction Many companies in the world gradually promote quality as the central customer value and regard it as a key concept of company strategy in order to achieve the competitive edge (Ross and Wegman, 1990). Measuring and reporting the cost of quality (COQ) is the first step in a quality management program. Even in service industries, COQ systems receive considerable attention (Bohan and Horney, 1991; Carr, 1992; Ravitz, 1991). COQ systems are bound to increase in importance because COQ-related activities consume as much as 25 percent or more of the resources used in companies (Ravitz, 1991). COQ information can be used to indicate major opportunities for corrective action and to provide incentives for quality improvement. Traditional cost accounting, whose main functions are inventory valuation and income determination for external financial reporting, does not yield the COQ information needed. While most COQ measurement methods are activity/process oriented, traditional cost accounting establishes cost accounts by the categories of expenses, instead of activities. Under traditional cost accounting, many COQ-related costs are lumped into overheads, which are allocated to cost centers (usually departments) and then to products through predetermined overhead rates. For example, among various COQ-related costs, the rework and the unrecovered cost of spoiled goods caused by internal failures are charged to the factory overhead control account which accumulates the actual overhead costs incurred (Hammer et al. 1993, pp. 155-64). The predetermined overhead rates should be adjusted to incorporate the normal levels of various COQ-related costs, and excess COQ-related costs will be buried in overhead variances. The cost accounting treatment described above cannot satisfy the needs of COQ measurement. Thus, Oakland (1993, p. 210) claims that â€Å"quality related costs should be col lected and reported separately and not absorbed into a variety of overheads†. Prevention-appraisal-failure (PAF) approach and process cost approach are two main approaches to measuring COQ. We will write a custom essay sample on Toyota Target Costing specifically for you for only $16.38 $13.9/page Order now We will write a custom essay sample on Toyota Target Costing specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer We will write a custom essay sample on Toyota Target Costing specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer However, The author wishes to thank the anonymous referees for many helpful comments and suggestions about this paper. The author also wishes to thank the authors of references cited in this paper, especially the authors, Barrie G. Dale and James J. Plunkett, of the book, Quality Costing, and the author, Peter B. B. Turney, of the book, Common Cents: The ABC Performance Breakthrough – How to Succeed with Activity-based Costing, from which this paper quotes a lot of COQ and BC concept. Quality cost measurement 719 Received March 1996 Revised March 1998 International Journal of Quality Reliability Management, Vol. 5 No. 7, 1998, pp. 719-752,  © MCB University Press, 0265-671X IJQRM 15,7 720 these approaches still cannot provide appropriate methods to include overhead costs in COQ systems. Accordingly, many quality cost elements require estimates and there is a prevailing belief in COQ literature. It is a danger that managers become too concerned with accuracy in COQ determina tion – a number-crunching exercise that will consume resources disproportionately (Oakland, 1993, p. 197). In addition, most COQ measurement systems in use do not trace quality costs to their sources (O’Guin, 1991, p. 0), which hinders managers from identifying where the quality improvement opportunities lie. Nevertheless, these deficiencies could be easily overcome under activity-based costing (ABC) developed by Cooper and Kaplan of Harvard Business School (Cooper, 1988; Cooper and Kaplan, 1988). ABC uses the two-stage procedure to achieve the accurate costs of various cost objects (such as departments, products, customers, and channels), tracing resource costs (including overhead costs) to activities, and then tracing the costs of activities to cost objects. The purpose of this paper is to present a conceptual framework for measuring quality costs under ABC. First, the present approaches to measuring COQ are reviewed; second, the two-dimensional model of ABC and activitybased management (ABM) is explained; third, COQ approaches and ABC are compared and an integrated COQ-ABC framework is presented; fourth, COQ measurement, COQ reporting, and uses of COQ information under ABC are discussed; finally, a hypothetically simplified example is presented to illustrate how to measure COQ under ABC. Approaches to measuring COQ Since Juran (1951) discussed the cost of quality, many researchers have proposed various approaches to measuring COQ. Reviews of COQ literature can be found in Plunkett and Dale (1987) and Porter and Rayner (1992). In this section, we will briefly review the approaches to measuring COQ. PAF approach After Feigenbaum (1956) categorized quality costs into prevention-appraisalfailure (PAF), the PAF scheme has been almost universally accepted for quality costing. The failure costs in this scheme can be further classified into two subcategories: internal failure and external failure costs. Oakland (1993, pp. 186-9) describes these costs as follows: †¢ Prevention costs: These costs are associated with the design, implementation and maintenance of the total quality management system. Prevention costs are planned and are incurred before actual operation. †¢ Appraisal costs: These costs are associated with the supplier’s and customer’s evaluation of purchased materials, processes, intermediates, products and services to assure conformance with the specified requirements. Internal failure costs: These costs occur when the results of work fail to reach designed quality standards and are detected before transfer to customer takes place. †¢ External failure costs: These costs occur when products or services fail to reach design quality standards but are not detected until after transfer to the customer. Quality cost elements. In order to calculate total quality cost, the quality cost elements should be identified under the categories of prevention, appraisal, internal failure and external failure costs. BS 6143: Part 2 (1990) and ASQC (1974) have identified a list of quality cost elements under this categorization. These lists just act as a guideline for quality costing. Most elements in these lists are not relevant to a particular industry, while many elements identified by practitioners are peculiar to an industry, or a company (Dale and Plunkett, 1991, p. 28). Some typical COQ elements are shown in Table I. In the initial stages of the quality costing exercise, some companies put mphasis on just identifying the costs of failure and appraisal activities. The methodology usually used is for each department, using a team approach, to identify COQ elements which are appropriate to them and for which they have ownership. Several techniques, such as brainstorming, nominal group technique, Pareto analysis, cause and effect analysis, fishbone diagrams, and forcefield analysis, can be used to effectively identify COQ elements (Dale and Plunkett, 1991, p. 41; Johnson, 1995). The quality cost measurement system developed will improve with use and experience and gradually include all quality cost elements. Economics of quality-related activities. One of the goals of total quality management (TQM) is to meet the customer’s requirements with lower cost. For this goal, we have to know the interactions between quality-related activities associated with prevention, appraisal, internal failure and external failure costs. It will help in finding the best resource allocation among various quality-related activities. In the literature, there are many notional models describing the relationships between the major categories of quality costs. Generally speaking, the basic suppositions of these notional models are â€Å"that investment in prevention and appraisal activities will bring handsome rewards from reduced failure costs, and that further investment in prevention activities will show profits from reduced appraisal costs† (Plunkett and Dale, 1988). Plunkett and Dale (1988) classify these notional models into five groups, which are further aggregated into three by Burgess (1996). After a critical review, Plunkett and Dale (1988) conclude that â€Å"many of the models are inaccurate and misleading, and serious doubts are cast on the concept of an optimal quality level corresponding to a minimum point on the total quality-cost curve†. Besides, Schneiderman (1986) asserts that, in some circumstances, if enough effort is put into prevention, no defects at all would be produced, resulting in zero failure costs and no need for appraisal (also given in Porter and Rayner (1992)). Thus, in these circumstances, the only optimal point is â€Å"zero-defects†. †¢ Quality cost measurement 721 IJQRM 15,7 Categories Prevention COQ elements Quality control and process control engineering Design and develop control equipment Quality planning by others Production equipment for quality – maintenance and calibration Test and inspection equipment – maintenance and calibration Supplier quality assurance Training Administration, audit, improvement Laboratory acceptance testing Inspection and test In-process inspection (non-inspectors) Set-up for inspection and test Inspection and test materials Product quality audits Review of test and inspection data On-site performance testing Internal testing and release Evaluation of materials and spares Data processing, inspection and test reports Scrap Rework and repair Troubleshooting, defect analysis Reinspect, retest Scrap and rework: fault of supplier Modification permits and concessions Downgrading Complaints Product service: liability Products returned or recalled Returned material repair Warranty replacement Loss of customer goodwill a Loss of sales a 72 2 Appraisal Internal failure External failure Table I. Typical COQ elements Note: a Intangible external failure costs (not included in BS 6143: Part 2) Source: BS 6143: Part 2 (1990) (also given in Dale and Plunkett (1991, p. 71)) However, Burgess (1996) integrated the three types of quality-cost models, derived from reducing Plunkett and Dale’s categories (1988), into a system dynamic quality-cost model displaying dynamic behavior consistent with published empirical data. According to the simulation results, Burgess concludes that the simulation provides support for the classic view of qualitycost behavior that an optimal level of quality exists only in certain timeconstrained situations. If the time horizon is infinite, or above a particular cutoff value, then spending on prevention can always be justified, i. e. the modern view prevails. Drawbacks of the PAF approach. Although the PAF model is universally accepted for quality costing, there are a number of criticisms of it (Oakland, 1993, pp. 200-1; Porter and Rayner, 1992), described as follows: †¢ It is difficult to decide which activities stand for prevention of quality failures since almost everything a well-managed company does has something to do with preventing quality problems. †¢ There are a range of prevention activities in any company which are integral to ensuring quality but may never be included in the report of quality costs. †¢ Practical experience indicates that firms which have achieved notable reductions in quality costs do not always seem to have greatly increased their expenditure on prevention. Original PAF model does not include intangible quality costs such as â€Å"loss of customer goodwill† and â€Å"loss of sales†. †¢ It is sometimes difficult to uniquely classify costs (e. g. design reviews) into prevention, appraisal, internal failure, or external failure costs. †¢ The PAF model focuses attention on cost reduction and ignores the positive contribution to price and sales volume by improved quality. †¢ As mentioned above, the classic view of an optimal quality level is not in accordance with the continuous quality improvement philosophy of TQM. †¢ The key focus of TQM is on process improvement, while the PAF categorization scheme does not consider process costs. Therefore, the PAF model is of limited use in a TQM program. Alternatives to the PAF approach. The alternatives to the PAF categorization scheme are divisions of quality costs into conformance and nonconformance, tangible and intangible, controllable and uncontrollable, discretionary and consequential costs, and so on. Crosby (1984, p. 86) divides quality costs into two categories: (1) the price of conformance (POC), including the explicitly quality-related costs incurred in making certain that things are done right the first time; and (2) the price of nonconformance (PNOC), including all the costs incurred because quality is not right the first time. Crosby’s POC includes prevention and inspection costs and his PNOC includes internal and external failure costs (Shank and Govindarajan, 1994, p. 6). In Xerox, quality costs are classified into three categories: (1) the cost of conformance (prevention and appraisal); (2) the cost of nonconformance (failure to meet customer requirements before and after delivery); and (3) the cost of lost opportunities (Carr, 1992). Quality cost measurement 723 IJQRM 15,7 724 The first two categories are analogous to Crosby’s POC and PNOC respectively. Xerox measures lost opportunities as the profit impact of lost revenues. It occurs when a customer chooses a competitive product over a Xerox product, when a customer cancels an order because of inadequate service, or when a customer buys Xerox equipment that is inadequate or unnecessary and switches to another brand. Juran claims that both prevention and appraisal costs are inevitable and are not worth including in quality costs (Juran et al. , 1975). Juran advocates a categorization of quality costs including: †¢ †¢ †¢ tangible factory costs, which are measurable costs such as scrap, rework, and additional inspection; tangible sales costs, which are measurable costs such as handling customer complaints and warranty costs; intangible costs, which can only be estimated, such as loss of customer goodwill, delays caused by stoppages and rework, and loss of morale among staff (also given in Porter and Rayner (1992)). Juran’s categorization scheme focusses on the costs of product failures and emphasizes the importance of intangible quality cost elements, which in the long term are of greater importance than cost reduction. Another alternative, proposed by Dale and Plunkett, is to consider the activities relating to supplier, company (in-house) and customer under the PAF categorization. This approach has the merit of new categories which closely relate to the business activities while retaining the advantages of th e PAF categorization (Dale and Plunkett, 1991, pp. 26-7). Process cost approach It seems that the identification of quality cost elements in the PAF approach is somewhat arbitrary. It may focus on some quality-related activities which account for the significant part of total quality cost, not on all the interrelated activities in a process. Under the philosophy of process improvement in TQM, analysts should place emphasis on the cost of each process rather than an arbitrarily defined cost of quality (Goulden and Rawlins, 1995). In view of this, the process cost approach, described in the revised BS 6143: Part 1 (1992), is proposed. It recognizes the importance of process cost measurement and ownership. The process cost is the total of the cost of conformance (COC) and the cost of nonconformance (CONC) for a particular process. The COC is the actual process cost of providing products or services to the required standards, first time and every time, by a given specified process. The CONC is the failure cost associated with a process not being operated to the required standard (Porter and Rayner, 1992). According to this definition, we know that the content of this categorization (COC and CONC) is different from that of Crosby’s (POC and PONC) and Xerox’s (COC and CONC) mentioned previously. The process cost model can be developed for any process within an organization. It will identify all the activities and parameters within the process to be monitored by flowcharting the process. Then, the flowcharted activities are allocated as COC or CONC, and the cost of quality at each stage (i. e. COC + CONC) are calculated or estimated. Finally, key areas for process improvement are identified and improved by investing in prevention activities and process redesign to reduce the CONC and the excessive COC respectively (Oakland, 1993, pp. 201-7; Porter and Rayner, 1992). The British Standards Institution has included this methodology in the revised BS 6143: Part 1 (1992). Dale and Plunkett (1991, p. 43) state that this will help to extend the concept of quality costing to all functions of an nterprise and to non-manufacturing organizations, and that it also gets people to consider in more detail the processes being carried out within the organization. A process modelling method, IDEF (the computer-aided manufacturing integrated program definition methodology) (Ross, 1977), can be used to construct the process cost models for the processes within an organization (Marsh, 1989). This method utilizes activity boxes with inputs, outputs, controls and mechanisms to depict the activities of a process. However, the IDEF method is developed for use by experts for system modeling. It seems to be too complex if departmental manager and staff were to be responsible for identifying the elements of process costs. Thus, Crossfield and Dale (1990) develop a more simple method called quality management activity planning (Q-MAP) for the mapping of quality assurance procedures, information, flows and qualityrelated responsibilities. In addition, Goulden and Rawlins (1995) propose a hybrid model to overcome the limitations of the IDEF method for process quality costing. It constructs integrated or functional flowcharts to represent the processes by using information from a three-level hierarchical model (function-department-activity), where the lowest level is an activity defined as a task with a single output. This will reduce the level of complexity of the IDEF type models. Other COQ approaches There are some approaches to measuring COQ in addition to the PAF approach and the process cost approach. For example, Son and Hsu (1991) proposed a quantitative approach to measuring quality costs, which considers both manufacturing processes and statistical quality control. Statistical terms of quality are translated to dollar terms in this approach. However, the quality cost model presented in their paper is restricted to a simplified manufacturing system which consists of only a machining area (with in-process sampling inspection) and a final inspection area (with 100 percent final inspection). Besides, Chen and Tang (1992) present a pictorial approach to measuring COQ, which is patterned after that used in a computer-based information system design. The COQ variables considered in this approach include direct COQ variables (PAF costs and quality-related equipment costs) and indirect Quality cost measurement 725 IJQRM 15,7 726 COQ variables (customer-incurred costs, customer-dissatisfaction costs and loss of reputation). It includes two major steps: (1) specifying the COQ variables as well as the significant relationships among the variables, and mapping the variables and relationships into an â€Å"influence diagram† showing the structure of a COQ system; and (2) converting the structure into a well-defined â€Å"entity-relationship diagram† showing the input-output functions and their associated properties. The influence diagram used in the pictorial approach can provide an easy-tounderstand COQ system for quality management practitioners, and the entityrelationship diagram can provide an effective framework for maintaining and modifying the COQ system. Quality cost collection Fundamentally, the PAF approach, the process cost approach and even Chen and Tang’s pictorial approach need first to identify the quality cost elements. For the PAF approach, COQ elements are identified under the cost categories of the selected categorization scheme. Most of COQ elements relate to qualityrelated activities. For the process cost approach, the cost elements of COC and CONC for a process are derived from the flowcharted activities of the process. Most cost elements of COC do not relate to quality-related activities of traditional COQ view. After identifying the quality cost elements, we should quantify the elements and then put costs (dollar values) on the elements which have been identified (Dale and Plunkett, 1991, pp. 40-1). In COQ literature, many authors pay attention to why COQ information is important and what should be included in a COQ system, and seldom discuss how to measure and collect quality costs. However, Dale and Plunkett give lots of guidance on quality cost collection, including objectives and scope, approaches, sources of data, ease of collection, level of detail, accuracy of data, and people involved (Dale and Plunkett, 1991, Ch. 3, pp. 6-51). Besides, Thorne (1990) recommends some relatively uncomplicated methods for calculating COQ, i. e. collecting quality costs by account, by defect type, by whole person, by labor hours, and by personal log (also given in Johnson (1995)). Dale and Plunkett state that â€Å"the collection and synthesis of quality costs is very much a matter of searching and shifting through data which have been gathered for other purposes† (Dale and Plunkett, 1991, p. 38). Some of quality costs are readily available from a cost accounting system (e. g. scrap and rework costs); some can be derived from the data of activity reports (e. g. repair and inspection costs). Nevertheless, a large portion of quality costs should be estimated by some ways. For example, the opportunity costs of lost customer goodwill and lost sales, which are intangible external failure costs (similar to the third category of Xerox’s COQ system), can be estimated by Taguchi’s quality loss function (Albright and Roth, 1994). Other examples are the costs of producing excess inventories and material handling due to suboptimal plant layouts, which are indirect failure costs and can be estimated by expertise. In addition, calculating prevention costs needs the estimates of apportionment of time by indirect workers and staff who do not usually record how they spend their time in various activities. Deficiencies of most COQ systems Generally speaking, there are the following deficiencies in measuring COQ among most COQ systems: †¢ The aspect of overhead allocation in calculating COQ is seldom discussed in the literature. In practice, some companies add overheads to the direct cost of labor and material on rework and scrap, while other companies do not. If they do, â€Å"rework and scrap costs become grossly inflated compared with prevention and appraisal costs which are incurred via salaried and indirect workers† (Dale and Plunkett, 1991, p. 45). †¢ Most of COQ measurement systems in use are not (there are some exceptions) intended to trace quality costs to their sources (O’Guin, 1991, p. 70) such as parts, products, designs, processes, departments, vendors, distribution channels, territories, and so on. Accordingly, the COQ information derived from these systems cannot be used to identify where the quality improvement opportunities exist. †¢ â€Å"It is the general lack of information about how people, other than direct workers, spend their time which presents a considerable obstacle to the collections of quality costs† (Dale and Plunkett, 1991, p. 112). The deficiencies mentioned above will decrease the accuracy of quality costs and limit the usefulness of a COQ system. However, these deficiencies can be easily solved under ABC (Cooper, 1988; Cooper and Kaplan, 1988), developed by Cooper and Kaplan of Harvard Business School, together with other techniques. Two-dimensional model of ABC Evolution of ABC The main shortcoming of traditional cost accounting is to distribute overhead costs over products by using volume-related allocation bases such as direct labor hours, direct labor costs, direct material costs, machine hours, etc. It will not seriously distort the product cost in the conventional manufacturing environment where overheads are just a small portion of product cost. In the modern manufacturing environment, however, the overheads will grow rapidly as manufacturers increasingly promote the level of automation and computerization, and the cost distortion of traditional cost accounting will be significant (Brimson, 1991, p. 179). The main reason is that many overhead costs vary with volume diversity, product diversity, and volume-unrelated activities (e. g. set-up and scheduling activities), not with the volume-related measures. For example, highvolume products consume more direct labor hours than low-volume products, but Quality cost measurement 727 IJQRM 15,7 728 high-volume products do not necessarily consume more scheduling cost than lowvolume products. Therefore, traditional cost accounting will overcost highvolume products and undercost low-volume products. In view of this, Cooper and Kaplan suggested using ABC to improve the accuracy of product costs. In early ABC systems (Turney, 1991, pp. 7-80), overhead cost is divided into various cost pools, where each cost pool contains the cost of a group of related activities consumed by products in approximately the same way. Each cost pool is distributed to products by using a unique factor that approximates the consumption of cost. This unique factor, called an allocation basis in traditional cost accounting, could be volume-related (e. g. direct labor hours and machine hours) or volume-unrelated (e. g. number of orders, set-up hours, and number of parts). Early ABC systems focus on the accurate assignment of overhead costs to products. They do not provide direct information about activities and do not consider the costs outside the plant. Thus, a two-dimensional model of ABC is proposed as shown in Figure 1. This ABC model is composed of two dimensions: cost assignment view and process view described in the following two subsections. The cost assignment view of ABC The detailed cost assignment view of ABC is shown in Figure 2. ABC assumes that cost objects (e. g. products, product lines, processes, customers, channels, Cost Assignment View Resources Resource Drivers Process View Cost Drivers Activities Performance Measures Activity Drivers Cost Objects Figure 1. Two-dimensional model of ABC Source: Adapted from Turney, (1991, p. 81) Resources Resource Drivers First Stage Quality cost measurement Activity Center Activity Activity Cost Pool 729 Cost Element Second Stage Activity Drivers Cost Objects Figure 2. Detailed cost assignment view of ABC Source: Adapted from Turney, (1991, p. 97) markets, etc. ) create the need for activities, and activities create the need for resources. Accordingly, ABC uses two-stage procedure to assign resource costs to cost objects. In the first stage, resource costs are assigned to various activities by using resource drivers. Resource drivers are the factors chosen to approximate the consumption of resources by the activities. Each type of resource traced to an activity becomes a cost element of an activity cost pool. Thus, an activity cost pool is the total cost associated with an activity. An activity center is composed of related activities, usually clustered by function or process. We can create activity centers by various ways according to different information needs. In the second stage, each activity cost pool is distributed to cost objects by using an adequate activity driver which is used to measure the consumption of activities by cost objects (Turney, 1992). If the cost objects are products, then total cost of a specific product can be calculated by adding the costs of various activities assigned to that product. The unit cost of the product is achieved by dividing the total cost by the quantity of the product. The resources used in manufacturing companies may include people, machines, facilities, and utilities, and the corresponding resource costs could be assigned to activities in the first stage of cost assignment by using the resource drivers time, machine hours, square footage, and kilowatt hours respectively (Brimson, 1991, p. 135). For the manufacturing activities, there are the following categories of activities (Cooper, 1990): †¢ unit-level activities (performed one time for one unit of product, e. g. 100 percent inspection, machining, finishing); IJQRM 15,7 730 batch-level activities (performed one time for a batch of products, e. g. sampling inspection, set-up, scheduling); †¢ product-level activities (performed to benefit all units of a particular product, e. g. roduct design, design verification and review); †¢ facility-level activities (performed to sustain the manufacturing facility, e. g. plant guard and management, zero defect program). The costs of different levels of activities will be traced to products by using the different kinds of activity drivers in the second stage of ABC cost assignment view. For example, machine hours is used as the activity driver for the activity machining; set-up hours or the number of set-up for machine set-up; and the number of drawings for product design (Tsai, 1996b). Usually, the costs of facility-level activities cannot be traced to products with the definite causeeffect relationships and should be allocated to products with appropriate allocation bases (Cooper, 1990). The information achieved from ABC cost assignment view is usually used for the decisions of pricing, quoting, product mix (Tsai, 1994), make versus buy, sourcing, product design, profitability analysis, and so on (Turney, 1992). The process view of ABC The process view of ABC is composed of three building blocks: cost drivers, activities and performance measures. It provides information on why the activities are performed via cost drivers and on how well the activities are performed via performance measures. Cost drivers are factors that determine the workload and effort required to perform an activity (Turney, 1991, p. 87), i. e. factors that cause a change in the cost of an activity (Raffish and Turney, 1991). For example, the quality of parts received by an activity (e. . the percent that are defective) is a determining factor in the work required by that activity, because the quality of parts received affects the resources required to perform the activity. Cost drivers identify t he cause of activity cost and are useful because they point people to take action at the root cause level, i. e. they reveal opportunities for improvement. An activity may have multiple cost drivers associated with it. Performance measures are used to indicate the work performed and the results achieved in an activity (Raffish and Turney, 1991). They tell us how the activity is meeting the needs of its internal or external customers. There are five fundamental elements of activity performance: (1) the quality of the work done; (2) the productivity for the activity; (3) the cycle time required to complete the activity; (4) the cost traced or allocated to the activity; and (5) customer satisfaction (Miller, 1996, pp. 94-5; Turney, 1991, pp. 88-9). †¢ Performance measures differ from one activity to another and from one company to another. Performance measures may be financial or nonfinancial. The process view of ABC places emphasis on processes. A process is a series of activities that are linked to perform a specific objective. A business process often runs across artificial organizational boundaries, departments or functions. Because of the interdependency of activities in a process, the work of each activity affects the performance of the next activity in the process. Accordingly, performance measures for one activity may become cost drivers for the next activity (Turney, 1991, p. 190). For example, performance measures for designing new tools may include the number of change in specifications and the number of new drawings, and these performance measures are just the cost drivers for the succeeding activity, manufacturing new tools. This tells us that merely identifying activities without consideration of their relationship to other activities in the process will result in overlooking many improvement opportunities (Lawson, 1994, p. 35). The information achieved from the process view of ABC can be used to aid in process/activity improvement. The potential improve