Costing a product by old and new techniques: different wines for different occasions

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to compare and contrast four different costing systems: F ull costing, Activity-based Costing (ABC), Time-driven Activity-based Costing (TDABC) and Value Stream Costing (VSC). Companies around the world use different costing techniques for a variety of reasons and a particular plant may wonder which approach would fit better its needs. Since TDABC and VSC are new techniques, there are not many references in literature and not many compa- nies have implemented them . For this reason , the comparison is done by means of a case study. Results given by the four methods may be more or less similar depending on the structure and organization of both the process and the company.