Abstract
Ratio analysis is a commonly used analytical tool for verifying the performance of a firm. Easy computed ratios explain their wide appeal although interpretation is problematic, especially when two or more ratios provide conflicting signals. This paper built a method to measure inefficient companies in shipping industry through identifying the waste and causes. However, shipping industry needs much resource and cost-down to maintain operation efficiency. Activity-Based Costing (ABC) is an information system developed in the 1980s to overcome some limitations in traditional cost accounting and enhance its usefulness to operation management. Data envelopment analysis (DEA) is a handful method for evaluating DMU's activities. An overall operation management without ABC cannot reveal specific activity areas. Therefore, this paper combines and integrates two separated but widely used models for measuring costs and efficiency performance. The results show that a better operation management of the shipping industry, including product planning and design, quality management and control, process design and improvement, and work force management, could achieve cost reduction and improve efficiency while integrated DEA, financial statement analysis and ABC analysis.
