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Material flow cost accounting in the light of the traditional cost accounting

Materialflusskostenrechnung im Licht der klassischen Kostenrechnung

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Abstract

This article aims at resolving controversies on the role of material flow cost accounting in traditional cost accounting. To this end, we elaborate its complementary use in cost accounting, cost management, and other management areas and thereby highlight its interdisciplinary and attention focusing character.

Zusammenfassung

Ziel dieses Artikels ist es, Kontroversen zur Rolle der Materialflusskostenrechnung in der klassischen Kostenrechnung aufzulösen. Hierzu zeigen wir auf, wie sie Kostenrechnung, Kostenmanagement und andere Managementbereiche sinnvoll ergänzen kann, und heben ihre Stärken bei der interdisziplinären Zusammenarbeit und Schwerpunktsetzung vor.

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Notes

  1. The term “not product output” or “non-product output” is defined by the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC) as follows: “Any quantity stream that leaves an enterprise and is not a product is by definition a non-product output (NPO).” (IFAC 2005, p. 35).

  2. Dyckhoff (1992) defines a by-product as an output which is technically inevitable in the production of another output type within the production system, since it is impossible to produce only the one product type alone (Dyckhoff 1992, p. 13). He distinguishes a by-product in a broad sense which from a physical point of view represents the usual case of any production and joint production in a narrow sense which implies producing at least two main or final products of which at least one of them represents a by-product (Dyckhoff 1992, p. 14).

    The main principles of thermodynamics provide a scientific justification for the occurrence of by-products (Oenning 1997, p. 17) because of the entropy increase, physically speaking, each product is also a by-product (Dyckhoff 1992, p. 13). Whether, from an economic point of view, by-products are recognisable at all or are includable in the calculations depends on the operational objectives and the natural and social framework conditions (Dyckhoff 1991, p. 285, quoted by Oenning 1997, p. 19). The idea that by-product production is the normal and not a special case has already been widely accepted (“Most industrial processes are multifunctional” (Guinée et al. 2002, p. 505)), even if traditional production theory has long excluded undesirable by-products such as waste, sewage, or air emissions in order to establish a clean interaction with marketing theory (Dyckhoff 2003, p. 714; Prammer 2009, p. 94).

  3. For English literature see e. g. Horngren et al. (2013); Kinney and Raiborn (2012).

  4. Strebel argues here that linking purchasing values with the costs of the residues is also problematic. In this case, points which are in principle independent of each other are connected with one another, which suggests the risk of false conclusions in the company policy. However, the occurrence of residues does not mean that it is valid to attribute parts of their production costs, e. g. material costs, to these residues. The costs of a production process are created for the entire by-product package (products and by-products) and, logically, they cannot logically be assigned individually to desired or undesired product types (Strebel 2006, p. 187).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Business and Economics, Chair of Environmental Management and Accounting, Technische Universitaet Dresden, Muenchner Platz 1/3, 01062, Dresden, Germany

    Edeltraud Guenther, Ramona Rieckhof & Matthias Walz

  2. Institute for Environmental Management in Companies and Regions, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Linz, Austria

    Daniela Schrack

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  1. Edeltraud Guenther
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  2. Ramona Rieckhof
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  3. Matthias Walz
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  4. Daniela Schrack
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Correspondence to Edeltraud Guenther.

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E. Guenther, R. Rieckhof, M. Walz and D. Schrack declare that they have no competing interests.

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Originally published as Günther E, Rieckhof R, Schrack D, Walz M (2016) Materialflusskostenrechnung im Lichte eines klassischen Kostenrechnungsverständnisses: Versuch einer Annäherung pp. 149–174 In: Ahn H, Clermont M, Souren R (Eds.) Nachhaltiges Entscheiden, Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden. The original German language book section was part of a commemorative volume on the occasion of the 65th birthday of Univ.-Prof. Dr. rer. pol. Harald Dyckhoff. With permission of Springer Nature. Many thanks to John Micozzi for providing the translation.

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Guenther, E., Rieckhof, R., Walz, M. et al. Material flow cost accounting in the light of the traditional cost accounting. uwf 25, 5–14 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00550-017-0446-7

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