The Integration of the Target Costing and Time-Driven Product Life Cycle Costing Techniques and it^,s effect on Cost Management

A Thesis Submitted to

 The Council of the College of Administration and

 Economics –  Karbala University ,as  Partial Fulfillment of  Requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in Accounting

By

QUSAY ABDUL ALAYMA ASWAD ALMUHANA

Supervised byProf. Dr. Salah Mahdi Jawad Al-Kawaz

The two Time-driven product life cycle cost and target cost techniques are among the most important modern techniques in cost and administrative accounting, which, by integrating them, enables economic units to manage their costs by reducing them, improving the competitive advantage as well as assisting management in making various decisions by calculating costs more accurately than methods. Traditional. As the Time-driven product life cycle cost technique focuses on the amount of resources exploited in the production of the product, determining the costs of untapped resources in all the stages that the product passes through, and not charging the cost of those untapped resources on the product by tracking the costs of the service sections supporting the production departments and allocating the actual costs on Production units, as for the target cost technique, it aims to reduce the cost of the product, and it integrates with the Time-driven product life cycle cost technology by taking advantage of the data provided by this technique in determining the current cost of the product more accurately. Thus, the current research aims to study the complementary relationship of the two above technologies through application in one of the factories of the General Company for Electrical and Electronic Industries in Baghdad, which is the cryogenic engine production plant. In order to achieve this goal, the researcher relied upon applying these two techniques on data obtained from the laboratory records, the research sample, as well as the field experience.

The research has reached several conclusions, the most important of which is that the cryogenic engine production plant, as a sample for research, suffers from the absence of features for the application of the Time-driven product life cycle cost and target cost techniques, which by their integration can achieve the goal of cost management, and the absence of a clear role in the laboratory Research and development to follow up on the developments and changes in the modern business environment, in which the laboratory Is directed by the customer. And also there is in the laboratory the research sample many good technical competencies, which can produce a product that is competitive and achieves the targeted profit, if They were not provided with appropriate conditions , such as government support and work according to the customer’s requirements, and as a result, the success of the laboratory’s research sample has become dependent on its ability to absorb the requirements and needs of the customer and design the product on its basis. By applying the two above techniques for their role in achieving this goal, focusing on market studies, searching for new marketing outlets, and opening sales fairs in the main and nearby commercial markets In order to increase the amount of sales, the effects of which are reflected in the result in the increase in production and the utilization of the untapped energy in most of the plant’s resources, the research sample, as well as knowledge of the advantages of competing products, to be compared with the local product, as an attempt to search for areas of cost reduction, as well as product design according to the requirements of The competitive market, customer requirements and needs.