Research On The System Of Strategic Cost Management In Supply Chain

Competition between companies is more and more replaced by competition between supply chains. Among the objectives most stated in supply chain management is the reduction of cost along the supply chain. The scope of cost management activities has been extended across organizational boundaries, with more attention being increasingly paid to active partnering between companies to achieve optimization potential. Cost management in supply chain is becoming another new profit source.The development of strategic cost management expanded the thought of cost management, whose objective is to reduce costs while simultaneously strengthening the strategic position of the firm. The dissertation introduces the theory of strategic cost management into supply chain to build a theoretical system of strategic cost management in supply chains, aiming at promoting competitive advantage of supply chain through cost management.The dissertation ameliorates the existing strategic cost management theory based on the viewpoints of others, pointing out the deficiency and building an improved framework, which is characterized by the ideas that Strategic cost management should include operating cost management system and work through the whole process of strategic management.The author describes the competitive advantages in supply chain, defines the competence of supply chain and builds a corresponding modal from four kinds of capabilities such as cost, value, rapidity and stability. Three different sorts of supply chain strategy are presented, following the layers and content of which are analyzed. Moreover, as a problem, the positioning of supply chain strategy and the match of that for node enterprises' competitive strategies is solved by coordinating enterprises' strategies and setting up common goals.The meanings of supply chain cost is redefined and systematically analyzed in the research, including the formation, structure, trade-off, and four layers of supply chain cost. With the viewpoint that decision is the headstream of cost, the author puts forward a Decision- Activity - Cost model, categorizes the decision fields in supply chain and analyzes their impacts on cost.Based on the goal of strategic cost management in supply chain, value chain analysis, target costing, activity-based costing and life cycle cost together with their applications in supply chain are integrated to form a methodological system of strategic cost management in supply chain.Finally, the dissertation presents the content system of strategic cost management in supply chain, which is composed of cost information, cost analysis, cost control, cost evaluation and ensuring policies for implementation.