An Empirical Research of Target Cost Management for Life Cycle Costs

本研究报告由四章组成。第一章分析了日本企业目标成本管理存在的几个问题。然后阐述了西方企业实施目标成本管理的进展。出乎我们意料的是，西方竞争对手采用了更为复杂的目标成本管理。最后，借鉴国外的应用，提出了一些建议。第二章主要研究目标成本管理的功能障碍。战略成本管理的观点有助于克服面临的问题，并提出了一些可能的改进建议。第三章简要概述了目标成本管理向欧洲企业转移的三年研究项目。以往的目标成本管理研究大多基于案例研究、文献调查和统计实证研究。然而，这个特殊的研究项目使用了一种相当独特的方法……纵向实地研究。说明了纵向田野调查的性质。然后，期待研究成果与一些发现。这家公司一直在学习日本的先进做法，并克服了我们现在面临的问题。公司的目标是降低公司的生命周期成本。还需要三年时间，才能揭开这一外国实验的真相。本章强烈建议依托这一研究方法推进未来的目标成本管理研究。最后一章描述了目标成本管理在日本企业中的应用现状。神户大学管理会计小组执行了这项邮件调查。在生命周期考虑方面，关注生命周期成本最小化的企业仍然有限。大多数公司对降低成本活动的关注相当狭隘，这种方法不一定会导致生命周期成本最小化。将对获得的数据进行更详细的检查。少

This research report is consisted from four chapters. In chapter one, several problems around target cost management in Japanese companies are identified. Then, the progress of implementing target cost management among Western enterprises is explained. Beyond our anticipation, Western competitors utilize target cost management with higher sophistication. The chapter is concluded with some suggestion by learning from foreign applications.Chapter two focused on the dysfunction of target cost management. Strategic cost management perspectives are useful to overcome the facing problems and several suggestions for possible improvements are described.Brief outline of three-year-research project of transferring target cost management into a European company is appeared in chapter three. Most of the previous target cost management researches is based on case research, literature survey, and statistical empirical research. This particular research project, however, utilized a quite unique resea … More rch methodology ; longitudinal field research. The nature of longitudinal field research is explained. Then, expecting research outputs with some finding follow. This company has been learning from leading-edge Japanese practices and overcoming problems now we are facing. The company aims to reduce life cycle costs of the firm. Three more years are needed to unveil the reality of this foreign experiment. The chapter strongly suggests relying on this research methodology to adcance target cost management research in the future.The final chapter describes the current state of the art of target cost management application among Japanese companies. Kobe University Management Accounting Group executed this mail survey. Concerning the life cycle consideration still limited number of the companies pay attention to life cycle costs minimization. majority of the companies has rather narrow focus on cost reduction activities and this approach does not necessarily lead to the life cycle cost minimization. More detailed examination of the acquired data will be taken place. Less