Track: Material Flow Cost Accounting

Abstract

The industrial production can be interpreted as a systematic transformation of inputs to outputs or, in other words, as an Input-Throughput-Output (ITO) system. In the context of the design and control of this system, numerous approaches focusing on different system elements and serving different goal dimensions (economic, ecological and technical) were developed. A similarity of most of these approaches is that they aim to identify weaknesses of a given system state, which are or at least can be named as inefficiencies. A quite new representative of this type of approaches is the Material Flow Cost Accounting (MFCA) that analyzes the efficiency of material and energy use. Its particular strength is that it values the effects of inefficiencies in monetary units and, thus, makes them more ‘visible’ for management. Seizing the idea and methodology of MFCA, the presentation will develop a framework of an ‘(in)efficiency costing’ expanding the scope from single types of input (material and energy) to all elements of the ITO system. Therefore, a systemization of the relevant issues – ranging from idle time cost to the mudas of Lean Thinking – and an overview of the existing approaches dealing with partial problems will be given.