Cost Systems Design

Offering a multidisciplinary roadmap for the design, development, and implementation of a strategic cost system, this book shows how to design a cost system to become a more effective decision-making tool and a source of competitive advantage for the organisation. It describes how to structure a cost systems design project and discuss the issues that should be addressed upfront from a management, operations, and costing perspective. Includes a URL site containing key terms and helpful Excel templates. Highlights the logistics of putting together and managing the project team. Addresses the technical and political issues that may arise as the project unfolds.

Providing valuable insight into the latest practice and design philosophies, this collection of readings and cases analyzes the defects that exist with traditional cost management systems, and shows how to design systems that will benefit a wide range of organizations. Opens with a thorough introduction to cost systems - with discussions on their use, product and process costing, operational control, financial reporting, and strategic relevance - and explores target costing, and ABC and product design and development. Considers the foundations of activity-based costing, including its necessity for companies, cost hierarchy, and activity attributes, and dedicates entire sections to the use of cost systems for managing customer and supplier relationships, and for designing and developing new products. Second Edition features include many new cases and a critical study of service industry and activity-based budgeting. For management consultants, CFO's, and controllers.

This collection of readings and cases analyzes the defects with existing, traditional cost management systems, and shows how to design systems that will provide value to a wide range of organizations.

Starting from the economic modelling of the organization, this innovative book proposes a mapping of all types (conventional and ABC) of cost systems currently in use. Design and relevance are formalized using a short list of parameters. The theoretical proposition is illustrated, through 19 systems built on a unique database.

This is the first English edition of an established work on cost-driven product design and development. It offers tried and tested methods for understanding, influencing and reducing product costs. The methodology and organization of cost management, as well as the effects on each type of cost are described. Using this knowledge the product developer can assume responsibility for costs. There are numerous examples and detailed derivation of results.

Since the success of products significantly depends on the quality of product performance, inadequate management of the product design process can lead to improper performance of products that can result in significant long-term business losses. Design for Profitability: Guidelines to Cost Effectively Manage the Development Process of Complex Products presents a design guideline for complex product design and development that enables you to cost-effectively improve the technical performance of your products and consequently improve your competitiveness in the marketplace as well as improve profitability. The book helps you improve the competitiveness of your organization in the market and eventually improve profitability. It presents a mobile robots design guideline based on an empirical study of the mobile robots design process. This is an unprecedented guideline based on the empirical investigation of the internal aspects of the design process of complex products for cost-effectively enhancing the competitiveness in the market. The book also presents a hybrid lean-agile design paradigm for mobile robots. In addition, it points out key approaches and risks to manage the product development process efficiently. In designing complex products and integrated systems, industrial designers face a dilemma of cost-effectively striking a balance between product development time and product performance attributes. This book shows how and when value is added in product design and development through identifying statistically the most and least correlated design activities and strategies to product performance attributes. Introducing a new paradigm in the field of engineering design, the book gives you key approaches to efficiently manage the product development process.

The system design interview is considered to be the most complex and most difficult technical job interview by many. Those questions are intimidating, but don't worry. It's just that nobody has taken the time to prepare you systematically. We take the time. We go slow. We draw lots of diagrams and use lots of examples. You'll learn step-by-step, one question at a time.Don't miss out.What's inside?- An insider's take on what interviewers really look for and why.- A 4-step framework for solving any system design interview question.- 16 real system design interview questions with detailed solutions.- 188 diagrams to visually explain how different systems work.