The implementation of an Activity-Based Costing (ABC) system in a manufacturing company

Abstract

Nowadays companies face strong competition at a global level, so there is a lot of pressure to increase productivity and lower production costs. Thus, obtaining a method of estimating the costs of the various products produced in the same company in a rigorous and precise way has turned into a really strategic objective [1]. To address this issue, the ABC methodology has been proposed, which establishes that resources are consumed by the activities and these are consumed by the products and services. The distribution of resources by activities and the subsequent allocation to the products is done through cost drivers [2]. The goal of this work is to re-port the main results obtained with the implementation of an industrial cost model based on the ABC principles in a Portuguese coffee production company that fits with the organization’s reality and reflecting the way how it operate on a day-to-day basis, in an accurate and reliable way, providing useful and relevant information.