1998 Volume 6 Issue 2 Pages 93-113
It is acknowledged that the role of today’s standard costing has been declining due to the change in the manufacturing environment. This viewpoint can be summarized as the following hypotheses.
Hypothesis 1: As automation progresses, the role of efficiency control by standard costs deteriorates.
Hypothesis 2: Due to product-variety and low-volume production, the setting of cost standards becomes more difficult.
Hypothesis 3: Due to the shortening of product life cycles, the setting of cost standards becomes more difficult.
However, in contrast, reflecting excessive automation, a shift to human-centered production to increase the motivation of workers has also been observed. Furthermore, today’s Japanese standard cost management is used due to dividing it into Cost Maintaining and Kaizen Costing.
In this research, these hypotheses were tested. As a result, the assertion that the role of standard costs due to automation progress deteriorated, was accepted partially, but the other roles weren’t accepted. On the other hand, as for the relationship between standard costs and budgeted costs, meaningful differences were obtained partially.
