A Comparative Analysis of Activity Based Costing and Standard Costing in Tracing the Effect of Lean Implementation in a Deterministic Process

Implementation of lean principles and practices has become widespread in many industries since the late 20th century. Companies are beginning to realize that this implementation is having an impact on their system costs either negatively or positively. Consequently, important research questions regarding the traceability of the system costs once lean principles have been implemented are being raised. The objective of this study is to compare two cost management techniques which assess the impact of lean implementation and monitor the lean progress in the system. The two costing methods are standard cost management and activity based costing. This study evaluates the product costs through overhead cost calculations and throughput by simulating a manufacturing environment after the implementation of lean principles, that in turn drives many organizational decisions.