An Empirical Research of Target Cost Management for Life Cycle Costs

本研究报告共分四章。第一章分析了日本企业目标成本管理存在的问题。然后，阐述了西方企业实施目标成本管理的历程。出乎我们的意料，西方竞争对手利用目标成本管理更复杂。第二章重点分析了目标成本管理的功能障碍。战略成本管理的观点是有用的，以克服面临的问题，并提出了几个可能的改进建议。简要概述了三年的研究项目，将目标成本管理转移到欧洲公司出现在第三章。以往的目标成本管理研究大多是基于案例研究、文献调查和统计实证研究。然而，这个特殊的研究项目利用了一个非常独特的研究， ...更多信息 纵向田野研究;解释了纵向实地研究的性质。然后，期待研究成果与一些发现如下。该公司一直在学习日本的先进做法，并克服我们现在面临的问题。该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。最后一章介绍了目标成本管理在日本企业中的应用现状。科比大学管理会计小组执行了这次邮件调查。关于生命周期的考虑，目前关注生命周期成本最小化的企业还不多。大多数公司对成本降低活动的关注范围相当狭窄，这种方法并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审查。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