...INTRODUCTION Life cycle costing is an alternative approach to cost management which accumulates and manages cost over a product’s lie cycle (Adamany & Gonsalves, 1994; Artto, 1994; Susman, 1989). There are two important aspects to life cycle costing which is the focus on the product cost and the inclusion of upstream and downstream costs. Upstream cost is incurred when company prepares to start its production process. These upstream costs can range from raw materials to research and development to product design. Upstream costs can have a significant impact on the efficiency and profitability of the production process. If raw materials are too expensive or if the design of a new product takes too long, the upstream costs can limit a company's potential profits before a single unit becomes available for sale. While downstream cost is incurred after a company has completed its production process, it must still get that product to its customers. The process involved in delivering those products to the customers is the source of the company's downstream costs. These downstream costs can range from distribution expenses to marketing plans to sales channels. Downstream costs also act as a determining factor in the company's profitability. If distribution costs are too high or sales efforts are ineffective, the downstream costs will eat away at expected revenues. The product life cycle is most frequently understood to mean the life cycle of a particular product on the market...
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...Costing Systems 2 Identifying the full range of sustainability impacts a vital stage in better decision making. A number of companies have begun the transition to improved social and environmental cost accounting using methodologies such as activity-based costing (ABC), life-cycle assessment (LCA), and full cost accounting (FCA) (Epstein, 2008). ABC assumes that activities related to products, services, and customers cause the costs. ABC first assigns costs to the activities performed by the organization (direct labor, employee training, regulatory compliance) and then attributes these costs to products, customers, and services based on a cause-and-effect relationship (Epstein, 2008) The main advantages of ABC include an assessment of costs of individual activities, based on their use of resources; accurate costing of activities to be obtained throughout an organization; ease of identification where high (and low) costs are being incurred (and the cause), and serving as a valuable tool for both business and process improvement. It also helps with future product planning; ie: the cost of all activities associated with a product or service can be accurately determined before it is launched. This can then help with determining pricing, and any associated expenditure. However there are disadvantages to ABC as well. It may be difficult to set up or establish, particularly if an organization is using more traditional accounting methodologies. It can be time consuming if...
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...DANTES Environmental costs and environmental impacts in a chemical industry eLCC and LCA on two colorants Stefan Bengtsson & Li Sjöborg Product Stewardship & Sustainability Akzo Nobel Surface Chemistry April 2004 Preface This report is the result of our master thesis work at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg. The project was performed at Akzo Nobel Surface Chemistry Sweden and at the department of Environmental System Analysis (ESA) at Chalmers. Sver ker Molander at ESA and Karin Sanne at Akzo Nobel have been the supervisors for this thesis work and we’d like to thank both of them for their support and their many good ideas. Additional thanks goes to the employees at Akzo Nobel Surface Chemistry Support Unit Sweden and to everyone we have been in contact with when collecting data to this thesis. Thank you! Göteborg, May 2004 Stefan Bengtsson Li Sjöborg Summary As the awareness of environmental problems increases so does the demands and guidelines from legislations and customers that deal with the environmental problems of the industries products and manufacturing processes. For a large international chemical company such as Akzo Nobel these increasing demands lead to costs for administrative work, taxes, testing, additional staff and investments. The aim of this study is to determine the properties of these “environmental costs” for the products of a chemical company. The study has focused on the production of two colorants. A surfactant (Berol 09)...
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...3 Case study on Plastics : PET Bottle Life Cycle of Plastics Crude Oil Polymer Product Use Waste Recovery Polymer Product Use Overview of PET bottle recycling Containers and Packaging Recycling Law Specified business entities Fiber Industry (wash, crash, melt, spin) Bottle Industry Obligation to recycle Local governments (deporimerization) Consumers Selective collection and storage Selective discarding Players Producers n n n n Plant designers Product designers Energy suppliers Related industrial sectors Consumers Municipal and governmental authorities Waste treatment agencies Role of KIH ‘configuration engine’ To inform players of their role in life cycle as a stakeholder To accumulate knowledge/information of life cycle from information suppliers To interpret massive life cycle data with transparency for rational decision making 1. 2. 3. Overview of PET bottle recycling Containers and Packaging Recycling Law Specified business entities Fiber Industry (wash, crash, melt, spin) Bottle Industry Obligation to recycle Local governments (deporimerization) Consumers Selective collection and storage Selective discarding Objective of this case study To develop a ‘configuration engine’, which takes LCA as an environmental metric concurrently with an economic metric, for chemical process designer, To clarify steps, tools and information in a form of business-model. To show actual design...
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...fleet, three scenarios of introduction of 10–30% fuel cell vehicles including plug-in hybrids configurations were analysed. Considering the scenarios of increasing hydrogen based vehicles penetration, up to 10% life cycle energy consumption reduction can be obtained if hydrogen from centralized natural gas reforming is considered. Full life cycle CO2 emissions can also be reduced up to 20% in these scenarios, while local pollutants reach up to 85% reductions. For the purpose of estimating road vehicle technologies energy consumption and CO2 emissions in a full life cycle perspective, fuel cell, conventional full hybrids and hybrid plug-in technologies were considered with diesel, gasoline, hydrogen and biofuel blends. Energy consumption values were estimated in a real road driving cycle and with ADVISOR software. Materials cradle-to-grave life cycle was estimated using GREET database adapted to Europe electric mix. The main conclusions on CO2 full life cycle analysis is that lightduty vehicles using fuel cell propulsion technology are highly dependent on hydrogen production pathway. The worst scenario for the current Portuguese and European electric mix is hydrogen produced from on-site electrolysis (in the refuelling stations). In this case full life cycle CO2 is 270 g/km against 190 g/km for conventional Diesel vehicle, for a typical 150,000 km...
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...Individual Assignment 2: LCA of two products Life Cycle Assessment of Nissan Cars *ASR: Automobile Shredder Residue. ASR is what remains after material recycling is done to recover as much ferrous and non-ferrous metallic material as possible from the automobile shredder residue. Nissan conducted LCAs since the early 1990s, and made quantitative comparisons to understand the environmental impact of materials that were changed in the following parts. * Radiators * Air conditioners * Front-end modules * Back doors Based on the results of the LCA Project carried out by the LCA Committee of the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association from October 1997 to March 2001, Nissan reviewed in-house LCA methods and calculated results for major models. * May 2005: Inventory analysis was certified as being in accordance with the LCA method stipulated in JIS Q14040 by the Japan Environmental Management Association for Industry. Models that have undergone LCA: Skyline (made in Japan), Dualis (made in England) To develop more environmentally-friendly vehicles, LCAs are also conducted for new technologies that are introduced. These results are used to achieve the goals set out in the Nissan Green Program 2010* and the Nissan QCT-C* management policy, which clarify our environmental efforts. * *Nissan Green Program 2010: An environmental program that establishes activity plans and specific numerical targets for Nissan to...
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...1.0 Question 1 To : James Moody Date : 25th November 2015 From : Chew Sin Hong Title : i) The Changes in the Business Environment that have contributed to the growth and importance of Management Accounting. ii) Role of Management Accountant play in a company`s value chain function. Management accounting nowadays are growing and it is becoming more and more important in the current trend. Management accounting is a process of measurement, accumulation, identification, preparation, analysis, communication and also interpretation of all the information of finance used by the management to evaluate, control and plan an organization with addition to assure the correct use and responsibility for the resource that are available. Management accounting likewise contains the arrangement of money related reports for non-administration groups, for example, shareholders, regulatory agency, creditor and the authorities for the tax (Ed, 2008). There are few factors that lead to the importance and growth of the management accounting. First of all are the globalization. Globalization is important and also a big role for the organization to sustain and survive in the current trend. This globalization are one of the factor that cause management accounting to be important because of the increasing of the communication and also the advancement of the transportation which allow company to penetrate into the market that have more potential customer has been widely expand. Therefore company...
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...evolution of their sustainability principles and broad plans for implementation. In the 1980s the environmental concerns were primarily pollution control and prevention with a focus on reducing emissions from existing manufacturing processes. During this period the company made significant improvement in pollution control and prevention, risk management, and facility improvements such as reducing toxic materials and emissions. In the 1990s the focus shifted to product stewardship, which emphasizes earlier intervention to minimize environmental impacts associated with the full life cycle of a product. The product stewardship function focused on developing global processes for tracking and managing regulatory compliance issues, customer inquiry response systems, information management, public policy shaping, product take-back programs, green packaging, and integrating “design for the environment” and life cycle analysis into product development processes. Today the company realizes that pollution prevention and product stewardship have become baseline market expectations and that to be an environmental leader in this century, a company needs to integrate environmental sustainability into its fundamental business strategy. This company realizes that it must redefine its core business utilizing the principles of the 3 “E’s”: Environmental, Economic and Equitable (social) sustainability. The reasons...
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...The Life Cycle Project for Envi Studies 101 – Due April 3, 2013 Part 2 – Supplemental Information RVCC – Spring - 2013 The over-arching concern is where does a product come from, how is it made and used, and where does it ultimately go in old-age? And how do all these stages and elements of the process impact the environment? The real world is also complicated by the fact that it is not just a composite or final product that has a life cycle, but generally a number of the components within the product have a cycle that plays out too. Our goal then is to gain some degree of understanding of how everything we use goes through a chain of causation and usage that has potentially many impacts on resources, human life and planetary ecosystems. One approach to the research component of this project is given further below for a generic cell phone. You don’t have to follow the approach given for your product as long as what you do is logical, reasonably complete, clearly written and covers the key elements in a Life Cycle Analysis, which are: What are 2-3 key raw materials required to make the product? Perhaps Hydrocarbons (oil, coal or natural gas) are needed somewhere in the process of extracting, refining or processing of raw materials. Such carbon resources may be needed to make fuel, electricity, plastics, industrial chemicals, medicines, etc. Perhaps concrete or other industrial materials are required. Ore may be needed and require smelting for metals such...
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...STUDY OUTLINE FOR CHAPTER 4 PRODUCT AND SERVICE DESIGN 1. Why is product or service design strategically important? Product and service design has typically had strategic implications for the success and prosperity of an organization. Furthermore, it has an impact on future activities. Consequently decisions in this area are some of the most fundamental that managers must make. 2. List some of the things that product and service design does. 1)Translates customer wants and needs into product and service requirements. 2)Refine existing products and services. 3)Develops new products and/or services 4)Formulates quality goals, and cost targets. 3. Give a few examples for each of these major reasons for design or redesign: Economic -low demand, excessive warranty claims, the need to reduce costs. social and demographic -Aging baby boomers, population shifts. political, liability, legal -Government changes, safety issues, new regulations. Competitive -New or changes products or services, new advertising/promotions cost or availability -Raw materials, components, labor, water, energy Technological -Product components, processes 4. What are the key questions of product and service design? 1)Is there demand for it? What is the potential size of the market, and what is the expected demand profile? 2)Can we do it? Do we have the necessary knowledge, skills, equipment, capacity, and supply chain...
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...optimize energy usage. This report is divided in two parts, carbon footprint calculations and water footprint calculation for major materials and recourses. Methodology and assumption This report is included some calculations based on assumption .Also some information about SMART building has been acquired from the builder. Complementary data, namely embodied factors has been obtained from recent reports and government website. The methodology has been applied in this report is based on analysing carbon foot print and water footprint in two main concept. First, embodied energy of materials has been used during the construction and then estimated energy consumption during operational time of SMART building. The building life is assumed to be 50 years. Carbon footprint of the SMART building In this...
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...the well being of both adults and children; this includes calcium, vitamins A, B & D. The history of milk began in the Neolithic age (the new stone age), a time when humans started the transition from hunting and gathering to a more settled way of life. Life Cycle of Milk Supply Chain: Environmental and societal impact of Milk; The dairy industry poses a number of challenges to the health of the environment- * Methane emission- this is release from cows’ during the digestion process either by belching or flatulence. Statistics vary on how much methane an average dairy cow expels on a daily basis. Some experts say 100 liters to 200 liters, while others say it's up to 500 liters a day. This amount of methane is comparable to pollution expelled by a vehicle * Carbon emission- according to studies carried out by the U.S dairy carbon footprint study, it showed that carbon footprint of a gallon of milk is approximately 17.6 pounds of carbon dioxide equivalents. This will usually occur during milk freight and distribution. * Water pollution-Disposal of organic wastes without treatment leads to pollution of water resources hence, causing a rapid growth of microscopic algae that kill fishes and other aquatic life. Furthermore, ammonia released from manure can lease to acid rain causing environmental harm. * Land conversion - The dairy industry is also responsible for majority of land conversion, particularly in the tropics, to grow the feed...
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...steps: Determine where you want to go. Examine the generic model. Modify it as necessary to meet the needs of your organization. Determine where you are. Compare your existing system safety program with the model and systematically list all differences. Develop a detailed plan to close the gap. Tailor and edit the procedures given here, if necessary, to produce a systematic plan for transforming your present program into the ideal program. (Stephans, 61) 1. What are the three broad categories of system safety tasks? Who is generally responsible for each task? • Hazard identification [identifying]– includes determining what parts of the project constitue a hazard and determininig the location of these hazards. Continues throughout the life cycle but is concentrated in the concept and design phase…(Stephans, 64) • Hazard analysis [analyzing] – involves evaluating each identified hazard by determining the potential severity of accidents resulting from each hazard and the probability that such an accident will occur. (Stephans, 66) • Hazard control [controlling] – involves applying the safety precedence sequence to identified hazards that present...
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...Environmental scanning is the first portion to an organization’s strategic management and is very important to the corporation. Environmental scanning is gathering information for the external and the internal of the company. A SWOTT is the best way to gather the information. A SWOTT is determining the strengths, the weaknesses, the opportunities, the threats, and the trends of the organization. Starbucks is a coffee shop that sets out to be different from the competitors. The company does not just focus on coffee but “bring a feeling of connection” to the people. Starbucks mission is “to inspire and nurture the human spirit- one person, one cup, and one neighborhood at a time”. Starbucks is a multi-billion dollar corporation and is the go to place if someone is looking for a great cup of coffee. By using an environmental scan and determining strategies the company uses to have competitive advantages will help explain why the company is so successful. Determining the values and what measurement guidelines Starbucks uses will promote how the corporation stands out for the rest of the competitors in the market. The internal and external environments of Levi Strauss and Apple computer describes how each company changed company focus by structuring the position of demographics to gain access to marketing trends and dealings with government regulations. Each company has proven capabilities for the organization’s success and taken responsible infrastructure...
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...Problem Statement: 1) Launch the Product or wait for in-house manufacturing Problem Statement: 1) Launch the Product or wait for in-house manufacturing * Competitive Pricing - Price of imported ‘Child & Me’ will be less than the competitors even if we launch now * High growth Market -CAGR 15% of nutritional drink segment * High Loyalty- Mothers do not want to try new products which are related to child’s health * Early Mover advantage- Only 2 brands at present * Competitive Pricing - Price of imported ‘Child & Me’ will be less than the competitors even if we launch now * High growth Market -CAGR 15% of nutritional drink segment * High Loyalty- Mothers do not want to try new products which are related to child’s health * Early Mover advantage- Only 2 brands at present Why Launch now Why Launch now * Higher Profit Margin due to reduction in manufacturing cost * Reduced Lead time ; Better Forecasting ; Lower Inventory * Higher Profit Margin due to reduction in manufacturing cost * Reduced Lead time ; Better Forecasting ; Lower Inventory Cheaper than competitors even if imported with 50% margin Cheaper than competitors even if imported with 50% margin * As ‘Launch now‘ has greater benefits than ‘Wait for in-house Mfg’ * Thus, Launch the Product Now and build In-house Mfg. Capability parallely * As ‘Launch now‘ has greater benefits than ‘Wait for in-house Mfg’ * Thus, Launch the Product...
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