4. Capítulo Metodología
4.10 Procedimientos y técnicas de análisis de los datos recogidos
In the current era of managed competition, health maintenance organizations (HMOs), and capitation, health care organizations look for ways to reduce costs while improving the quality of care. Several health care organizations recently experimented with a new anesthesia that would enable patients to leave the recovery room sooner. Managers hoped the new anesthesia would both reduce the costs of nurse staffing in the recovery room and increase customer satisfaction because patients would leave the surgery center earlier.
The managers faced the problem that resources used (patient time in the recovery room) did not equal resources supplied (expenditures to pay nurses to staff the recovery room). Researchers found that a parti- cular new anesthesia reduced patient time in the recovery room by one-third. Although resources used in the recovery room were 33 percent less, would resources supplied also go down by 33 percent?
Researchers found the answer to be no in this case. They discovered that the resources supplied (that is, expenditures to pay nurses) went down by only 20 percent, despite the 33 percent decrease in patient time. Why? Primarily because the outpatient surgery center employed nurses in four-hour shifts.
Once nurses went on duty, the managers could not save their wages, even if the patient census dropped in the recovery room.
In the end, managers realized that the new anesthesia would have three desirable effects: 1. Patients would go home sooner, which increased
their satisfaction.
2. Costs would be lower; even a 20 percent reduction beats no reduction.
3. Both patient care and nurse morale would improve. Reducing resource usage by 33 percent and reducing resource supply by only 20 percent creates unused capacity. Nurses could use this ‘‘unused capacity’’ for many desirable purposes, including spending more time with each patient, devoting more time to patient follow-up, and doing unscheduled training.
Incidentally, turnover in other hospital departments provided ample jobs for nurses who would no longer be needed in the outpatient surgery-center recovery room.
Source: Based on M. W. Maher and M. L. Marais, ‘‘A Field Study on the Limitations of Activity-Based Costing When Resources Are Provided on a Joint and Indivisible Basis,’’ Journal of Accounting Research 36, no. 1, 129–142.
they have complications from surgery or side effects from drugs administered during and after surgery.
In cases where the firm supplies resources as it uses them, the resource supply will generally equal the resource usage, resulting in no unused capacity. Good examples are materials costs and piecework labor. If the grower had paid the piecework labor rate of $1.50 per crate, the resources supplied would have been $1.50 per crate of strawberries picked and the resource used would also have been $1.50 per crate picked. There would have been no unused capacity. The next section expands on these ideas by suggesting a new reporting format that presents managers with important information about resources used, resources supplied, and unused capacity.
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E SOURCE SWe now discuss an important way for managers to add value in companies. The previous sections have demonstrated two key concepts: the cost hierarchy and the difference between resources used and resources supplied. Conventional management reports do not distinguish these. Typical reports show costs as line items, as for Kaplan, Inc., in Exhibit 3.8. It is impossible for managers to distinguish resources used from resources supplied in such reports.
Here we present in Exhibit 3.9 a new format of report that compares resources used with resources supplied and classifies costs into cost hierarchies. This information will help managers to manage resources wisely. Note first that this format categorizes costs into the cost hierarchies discussed earlier in this chapter. Managers can look at the amount of costs in each hierarchy and figure out ways to manage those resources effectively. For example, managers see that batch- related activities receive $30,000 of resources supplied. Now they investigate how much of that $30,000 they can save by changing the production process—for example, by cutting the number of setups in half.
Perhaps of greater interest, the report shows managers the unused portion of the resources for each type of cost. Here’s how it works. Take setup costs. Assume the cost driver is ‘‘hours of setup’’ and the cost driver rate is $100 per hour. Based on the information in the income statement, $20,000 was spent on setups. That represents 200 hours of setup capacity (¼ $20,000/ $100 per setup hour). However, the company used only 140 hours (¼ $14,000 resources used/ $100 cost driver rate) during the month. The report shows managers that $6,000 (or 60 hours) of unused setup resource is available.
EXHIBIT 3.8
KAPLAN, INC.
Traditional (Detailed) Income Statement January Sales... $180,000 Costs Materials ... $30,000 Energy... 10,000 Short-term Labor ... 4,000 Outside Contracts... 6,000 Setups... 20,000 Parts Management ... 7,000 Purchasing... 10,000 Marketing... 15,000 Customer Service... 4,000 Engineering Changes... 6,000 Long-term Labor ... 7,000 Depreciation (buildings)... 20,000 Administrative ... 13,000 Total Costs... 152,000 Operating Profits... $ 28,000 Cost Hierarchies 91
All other things equal, managers could have used perhaps as much as 60 additional hours of setup in January without increasing expenditures. In reality, managers know that some unused resources are a good thing. Having some unstructured time for ad hoc training, for leisure, or for thinking about ways to improve work and the work environment can boost morale and productivity.
Note that some costs have more unused resources than others. The costs listed under unit- related costs at the top of the report show little or no unused resources. These costs vary proportionately with output and will often have little or no unused resources. Short-term labor, for example, is the cost of piecework labor or temporary help employed on an ‘‘as needed’’ basis. In a college, a part-time lecturer hired for only one class is an example of short-term labor. Many of us have worked as short-term laborers during the summer in resorts, on farms, fighting forest fires, in retail stores, or providing delivery services.
Capacity-related costs will have unused resources unless the company operates at full capacity. Long-term labor resources are the costs of employing people who are not laid off during temporary fluctuations in production. In colleges, permanent faculty and staff are examples of long-term labor.
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YS TEMSAccountants cannot implement activity-based costing without becoming familiar with the operations of the company. Accountants become part of a team with management and people from production, engineering, marketing, and other parts of the company who all work to identify
EXHIBIT 3.9
KAPLAN, INC.
Activity-Based Management Income Statement January Resources Used Unused Capacity Resources Supplied Sales $180,000 Costs Unit: Materials ... $ 30,000 $ 0 $30,000 Energy... 10,000 0 10,000 Short-term Labor ... 3,500 500 4,000 Outside Contracts... 6,000 0 6,000 $ 49,500 $ 500 $50,000 Batch: Setups... $ 14,000 $ 6,000 $20,000 Purchasing... 9,000 1,000 10,000 $ 23,000 $ 7,000 $ 30,000 Product- and Customer-Sustaining:
Parts Management ... $ 6,000 $ 1,000 $ 7,000 Marketing 14,000 1,000 15,000 Customer Service... 2,000 2,000 4,000 Engineering Changes... 5,000 1,000 6,000 $ 27,000 $ 5,000 $32,000 Capacity-Sustaining: Long-term Labor ... $ 5,000 $ 2,000 $ 7,000 Depreciation (buildings)... 12,000 8,000 20,000 Administrative ... 10,000 3,000 13,000 $ 27,000 $13,000 $40,000 Total Costs... $ 126,500 $25,500 $152,000 Operating Profits ... $ 28,000
the activities that drive the company’s costs. This often creates discomfort at first as accountants deal with unfamiliar areas, but in the long run their familiarity with the company’s operating activities improves their productivity. Also, non-accounting personnel feel a greater sense of ownership of the numbers reported by the accounting system as accounting improves its credibility among non-accountants.
Implementing activity-based costing goes badly when influential people in the organization fail to buy into the process. People become accustomed to accounting methods in companies just as people in sports become accustomed to playing by one set of rules and oppose change to the unknown. In fact, specialists who advise companies about how to implement advanced cost- management systems believe that top-level employee resistance presents the single biggest obstacle to implementing activity-based management. For example, analysts at one company spent several months of their time and hundreds of hours of computer time to develop an activity- based costing system that revealed several hundred clearly unprofitable products that the company should eliminate. The key managers who made product elimination decisions agreed to eliminate only about 20 products. Why? The analysts had failed to talk to these key managers early in the process. When these managers saw the results, they raised numerous objections that the analysts had not anticipated. The moral is: If you are involved in trying to make a change, get all the people who are important to that change involved in the process early.
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ABC simply works better in some cultures than in others. A researcher studying the attempt of Harris Semiconductor to implement ABC in Malaysia and the United States found that ABC’s emphasis on cross-functional teams for implementation worked better in Malaysia than in U.S. plants. Further, he found that the U.S. plants’ emphasis on short-term results created skepticism about ABC. Consequently, the U.S. plant managers did not use ABC to its fullest potential.7ABC is not a quick fix; it is a process that requires patience and participation to see results. Cultures that reward only short-term results are not fertile grounds for ABC.
S ummar y
These items relate to the learning objectives stated at the beginning of the chapter.
1. Identify strategic and operational uses of activity-based management. Activity-based management can help a company develop strategy, long-range plans, and subsequent competitive cost advantage by focusing attention on activities.
2. Differentiate between traditional cost allocation methods and activity-based costing.The simplest allocation method, plantwide allocation, considers the entire plant to be one cost pool. The department allocation method uses a separate cost pool for each department. Activity- based costing uses a cost pool for each activity center.
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P. Brewer, ‘‘National Culture and ABC Systems,’’ Management Accounting Research 9, no. 2, 241–260.