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代写留学生论文A generic activity-dictionarybased method for product costing in mass customization
 

Abstract
Purpose – Estimating product cost at the design stage, often referred to as product costing, is vitally
important in the product configuration process in the mass customization paradigm. There are three
research streams in this field: analogous, statistical, and analytical methods. However, in a mass
customization environment, these methods suffer the drawbacks of poor accuracy, low-agility and an undesirable degree of detail. It is imperative to develop an efficient framework for product costing in
mass customization. The paper aims to address these issues.
Design/methodology/approach – Activity-based costing (ABC) becomes a new trend in product costing which alleviates the shortcomings discussed above. However, the complexity of ABC probably increases in mass customization with a high degree of variety. In this research, a framework is formalized for product costing in mass customization, in which a generic activity definition is proposed
to simplify and catalyze ABC practice in high-variety production. Moreover, an activity dictionary with a hierarchical structure is developed to bring commonality and modularity to the storage and retrieval of activity data.
Findings – A generic activity-dictionary-based method for product costing in mass customization is
developed.
Research limitations/implications – The method proposed for product costing provides valuable cost data for product specifications, as well as the activities to create them. Therefore, a product
configuration solution can be financially evaluated and optimized.
Practical implications – Based on the methodology proposed, a prototype system has been developed and implemented in a computer-assembling company. Originality/value – This paper alleviates the negative impact of activity variety on product costing.
Keywords Estimation, Mass customization, Activity based costs
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
Product costing is defined as a process of estimating the cost of a final product at
design stage (Sheldon et al., 1991). Whitney (1987) pointed out the predominant
percentage of manufacturing cost of a product is determined at product design
stage. Therefore, estimating cost at design stage, i.e. product costing, is one of the
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
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This research is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China and Hong Kong
Research Grants Council (Grant No. 70418013, 70471022, 70501021, and N_HKUST625/04).
JMTM
18,6
678
Received January 2006
Revised November 2006
Accepted January 2007
Journal of Manufacturing Technology
Management
Vol. 18 No. 6, 2007
pp. 678-700
q Emerald Group Publishing Limited
1741-038X
DOI 10.1108/17410380710763859
vital enablers for accurate pricing in customer negotiation. Moreover, product
costing is able to discover the linkages between design specifications and cost
factors and then find the method to reduce cost at early stage.
Product costing has received enormous attention and popularity in industry and
academia. The prevailing approaches can be classified into three categories: analogous
methods, statistical methods and analytical methods (Alexander et al., 2002). Analogous
methods adopt functional 本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。