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Japanese Target Costing

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Japanese Target Costing: A Historical Perspective
Patrick Feil, Keun-Hyo Yook, Il-Woon Kim
INTRODUCTION Target costing originated in Japan in the 1960s, though it remained a secret for years. Since the 1980s, however, when target costing was widely recognized as a major factor for the superior competitive position of Japanese companies, extensive efforts have been made to convey target costing to Western companies. Many large companies in North America and Europe have tried to adopt target costing to enhance their cost management and, thus, increase their competitiveness. Consequently, many variations of target costing have been developed and are being used in different countries. Since target costing, like many other management …show more content…

Their management accounting systems incorporate this commitment.” Similarly, Sakurai (1989) writes that “…target costing can be defined as a cost management tool for reducing the overall cost of a product over its entire life cycle with the help of production, engineering, R&D, marketing and accounting departments.” Later, “genka kikaku” was viewed as a tool of profit management. As Monden (1995), for example, states: “Target costing is defined as a companywide profit management activity during the new product development stage that includes: (1) planning products that have customer-pleasing quality, (2) determining target costs (including target investment costs) for the new product to yield the target profit required over the medium to long term given the current market conditions, and (3) devising ways to make the product design achieve target costs while also satisfying customer needs for quality and prompt delivery.” A detailed discussion of the various definitions by Japanese scholars can be found in the work of Seidenschwarz (1993), which classifies the definitions into three different categories: • Market-oriented (Hiromoto). • Engineering-oriented (Sakurai and Monden). • Product function-oriented (Tanaka and Yoshikawa). As the variety of definitions

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