Kalite maliyetleri sisteminde faaliyet bazlı maliyetlendirme yönetiminin kullanımı

Abstract

Kalite maliyetleri, ürünlerde kaliteyi sağlayabilmek için katlanılan maliyetlerdir ve hataların ortaya çıkarılmasını, hataların kendisini ve ortaya çıkarılması için yapılan faaliyetleri içeren bir kavramdır. Kalite maliyetleri kavramı, toplam kalite felsefesinin gelişimi ile birlikte ortaya çıkmakta ve toplam kalitenin yaygınlaşması ile günden güne daha fazla işletmede uygulama alanı bulmaktadır. Kalite maliyetlerinin ölçümü, toplam kalite anlayışının bir kaçınılmaz parçasıdır ve ölçüm sonuçları kalite yönetimi için bir araçtır. Bu sebeple kalite maliyet verilerinin tanımlanması, sınıflandırılması, ölçülmesi, analiz edilmesi, raporlanması önemle üzerinde durulması gereken bir konudur. Kalite maliyet ölçüm sonuçlarının, yüksek maliyetli alanların saptanması, azaltılması ve işletmenin daha çok önleme amaçlı çalışması için geliştirme faaliyetlerine bir taban teşkil etmesi temel amaçtır. Toplam kalite anlayışını benimseyen ve uygulayan işletmeler, mutlaka bir kalite maliyet sistemi kurmalıdır. Kalite maliyetlerinin ölçümü için literatürde benzer metodolojiler geliştirilmiştir. Bu çalışmada ise, bir işletmede kalite maliyetlerinin ölçümü mevcut metodolojilerden yararlanılarak oluşturulmuş bir modelle yapılmış, ardından modelin uygulamada zorluklarını ortadan kaldırmak amacıyla kalite maliyetlerini, kaynakların faaliyetlere tüketilmesi esasına dayanan Faaliyet Bazlı Maliyetlendirme Sistemi ile bütünleştirerek bir uygulama modeli geliştirilmiştir. Çalışmada Faaliyet Bazlı Maliyetlendirme metodolojisinin kalite maliyetleri ölçümünde kullanılmasını bir uygulama modeli ile göstermektedir, önerilen yeni modeli için örnek uygulama, işletmede incelen dört süreç için tanımlanan alt süreçlerden birinde gerçekleştirilmiştir.

Quality costs, are the costs that are incurred for providing quality on the products, including to the defect itself and the activities to find out the defects. The concept of quality costs, appeares out with the improvement of total quality philosophy and as well as the total quality becomes well-known, quality costs spread to the larger application areas. The measurement of quality costs is an obligatory part of total quality approach for that the measurement results can be used as an effective tool in the quality management. Thus, the definition, classification, measurement, analysis and the reporting of the quality cost data requires oversensitivity. The measurement results, help in determining the high costed areas, serve as a base for minimizing them and control if the quality costs are spent for preventing the poor quality as aimed. The companies assuming and appling the total quality philosophy, must establish a quality cost system, as soon as possible. Quality costs are classified into four basic categories: 1. Prevention Costs 2. Appraisal Costs 3. Internal Failure Costs 4. External Failure Costs Prevention costs are incurred because poor quality of conformance can exist. Prevention costs include the the cost of planning and designing the production process to ensure conformance. Also included in this category are the costs of developing quality standarts, the cost of quality training, the cost of forming and operating quality circles, and the cost of evaluating the quality control system. Appraisal costs include the cost of testing and inspecting both purchased materials and the firm' s own product. They also include the cost of routine field tests and the cost of outside product endorsements. Internal and external failure costs are incurred because the poor quality of conformance does exist. Internal failure costs include the cost of rework on defective items, the net cost of scrapped items, the cost of downtime due to xix the failed products and materials, and other exists for adjusting the machine settings, retested failed products, and so forth. External failure costs include the cost of warranty service and replacement, the cost of product liability and the opportunity cost of lost sales. Expenditures for prevention and appraisal can reduce the cost of external and internal failure. But increasing appraisal costs, may result in high internal failure costs, despite low externel failure costs. The approach for minimizing all failure costs is acting preactive and directing all process in the company on the philosophy of spending more in prevention. The core purpose must become preventing rather then finding defects. A quality measurement system established in a company, defines and classifies the quality costs in the business processes and collects, analyzes and also reports the quality cost data for providing the information needed to evaluate the success of investments in prevention or appraisal both. This can be done by comparing the actual quality costs with budgeted quality costs or with some bases like, net profit, total costs, etc. The goal of any quality cost system is to facilitate quality improvement efforts that will lead to operating cost reduction opportunities. That strategy for using quality costs is quite simple: 1. Take direct attack on failure costs in attempt to drive them zero, 2. Invest in the right prevention activities to bring about improvement, 3. Reduce appraisal costs according to the results achieved, 4. Continuously evaluate and redirect prevention efforts to gain further improvement. This strategy is based on the premise that:. For each failure there is a root cause,. Causes are preventable,. Prevention is always cheaper. In a practical sense, real quality costs can be measured and then reduced through the proper analysis of cause and effect. As failure costs are revealed through appraisal actions or customer complaints, they are examined for root causes and eliminated through corrective action. Elimination of root causes means permanent removal. The further along in the operating process that a failure is discovered, i.e., the nearer to product or service use by the customer, the more expensive it is to correct. Usually as failure costs are reduced, appraisal efforts can also be reduced in a statistically sound manner. The knowledge gained from this improvement can then be applied, through prevention activities or disciplines, to all new work. As straight forward as this approach may appear, it cannot work unless there is a first a basic quality measurement system that clearly identifies the correctable elements of performance failures which represent the best XX potential for cost improvement. Such a system is designed to use the data from inspections, tests, process control measurements or evaluations, and customer complaints as a measure of company performance and a source of determining cost reduction projects. This measurement is a basic and an important part of quality management. The potential for improvement can be determined by a system accurate and dependable quality cost measurement and analysis. Since every dollar of quality cost saved can have positive effect on profits, the value of clearly identifying and using quality costs should be obvious. By minimizing quality costs, quality performance levels can be improved. Some companies believe that a quality cost program will require extensive accounting system changes and additional staff. Others believe that their present cost accounting system is sufficient to identify all areas requiring management attention. Unfortunately, accounting systems are never designed to demonstrate the impact of the quality of performance (thought to be subjective measurement) on overall operating costs. That is why many of these costs remained hidden for so long. Identifying and collecting quality costs must be comprehensive if the system to be effective, but it also must be practical. Usually, some of the quality cost data can be collected from the existing accounting system. Large elements of quality costs are incurred but not accurately identified with in the accounting system, estimates should be used until the system can be adjusted. This is necessary before a reasonable picture of total quality costs can be portrayed as a justification for improvement action. Also, if these quality related elements are become a prime target for cost reduction, they cannot be buried somewhere with in other accounts. They must be clearly visible. For all the cited reasons, it is essential that both the in-house descriptions and the responsibilities for quality cost collection, compilation, and reporting be a function of controller's office - as a service to the quality management function. A controller's procedure for quality costs is necessary to provide company definitions or estimating technique, and location of elements within the company manual of accounts i.e., all tat is needed to accurately portray total cost to the company. Holding the controller responsible for quality cost measurement will establish three important standarts for the quality cost program:. It will provide the stamp of financial validity to the program,. It will assure that collection costs remain within the practical limits,. It will provide an opportunity for effective teamwork to develop between the controller and the quality function, with both organisations seeking cost benefits for the company. In developing the details of a quality cost system, there are two important criteria by which to be guided: xxi 1. Recognising that quality costs are a tool to justify improvement actions, and measure their effectiveness, 2. Including insignificant activities is not essential to effective use of quality costs. In the case that, using some classical measurement systems are designed on the basis of gathering data from the existing accounting system and developing calculation formulas for the data that will be collected from the different departments. The variety of data sources cause problems, in the data collection methodology. The quality costs are usually defined in the form of activities driving the cost by consuming the resources. This basic structure of the quality costs sub-classification, forms the idea if an activity based costing system improved for the measurement methodology, can help in standardisation of costing. Activity Based Costing (ABC) depends on the idea that the products consumes the resources with the activities. So, the activities are analysed that build up the whole business processes while the activities are related with the resources to find out how much/many and where the resources are consumed. ABC can easily be integrated to a quality cost system, while it goes well with the ISO 9000 standarts, Total Quality Management and the continuous improvement philosophies. It can be used for measuring the cost of the quality activities and the other activities which are related with quality costs. The following steps summarizes a methodology which is directly integrated from ABC to quality costing. Determining the quality actions, Gathering the quality actions under quality activities, Reporting the cost of quality activities Determining the quality activity centres. Determining the cost drivers of quality activities. Driving the direct costs to the activities with cost drivers Reporting the cost of determined quality activities. Another important subject is that, the ABC completes quality costs, cost improvement. The objective of both two system is to minimize cost with managing activities, to reorganize the resources. The improvement steps for ABC, which can be used for quality costs is as below. Minimize the time and effort spent for the activity,. Cancel the unnecessary activities,. Choose the activity with the minimum cost,. Share the activities in possible positions,. Reorganize the resources that are not used. xxii In this study a quality cost system is developed for a company where Total Quality System is being used. The system is based on the classical approaches to the quality costing. The quality cost data is designed to be collected from existing accounting system, information gathered in different departments for special reasons and specially designed information flow for the system. Procedures, orders and forms are established. The responsibilities are determined and the first measurement is realized. But, the data drived from existing accounting system was not designed for quality costing and it might have more or less information than required. The information flow, was designed to be on the documents which have to pass through the lower organisation levels to the higher,- especially designed for the manpower spent in the quality activities- caused waste of work time. Also, this document flow which is company wide had to be limited in monthly periods which will result in inaccurate information. It is determined to develop a new system, after the evaluation of the first quality costing experience. This system had to be practical, have a standard methodology for both data types and must include indirect resources while they are also spent during quality activities. So, the new system is based on the ABC methodology. This study, links the quality activities' costs with ABM Methodology with an application designed to develop a new system for a company, where the first quality cost system that is based on the classical approach is failed, in methods for gathering cost data. In the new system, quality activities are sorted out through the ISO 9000 Quality procedures and instructions in the order of defining processes, sub- processes and activities. Then the activity- resource analysis are completed, determining the resource usage proportions and standard quantities of the resource consumption by the activity in the units where the quality activities take place. These proportions are costed with the actual resource cost data. Indirect resources attained with the area or number of men working in the unit where the quality activity takes place. This standardized methodology of measurement, works with the standard resource consumption quantities of activities which are determined once and revised if needed. The actual data that is fed to the system is the number of activity output. The sum of all resources consumed by a quality activity forms the quality activity cost. The quality activity costs are collected in the units where the quality activities are defined. While the cost measurement is done by the activity unit itself, it gets easier to do the cost implementing and minimizing.