战略成本管理：价值链的视角[外文翻译]

1、原文：strategic cost management: thevalue chain perspectiveone of the major themes in strategic cost management (scm) concerns the focus of cost management efforts. stated in question form: how do we organize our thinking about cost management? in the scm framework, managing costs effectively requires

2、a broad focus, external to the firm. porter 19851 has called this the value chain. the value chain for any firm in any business is the linked set of value-creating activities all the way from basic raw material sources through to the ultimate end-use product delivered into the final consumers hands.

3、 this focus is external to the firm, seeing each firm in the context of the overall chain of value-creating activities of which it is very probably only a part. we are aware of no firms which span the entire value chain in which they operate.a firm such as chevron in petroleum spans wide segments of

4、 the value chain in which it operates, from oil exploration to service stations, but it does not span the entire chain. fifty percent of the crude oil it refines comes from other producers, and more than one third of the oil it refines is sold through other retail outlets. also, chevron is not in th

5、e auto business at all, the major user of gasoline. more narrowly, a firm such as maxus energy is only in the oil exploration and production business. the limited stores are big downstream in retail outlets but own no manufacturing facilities. reebok is a famous shoe brand, but the firm owns very fe

6、w retail outlets. reebok does, however, own its factories.though the value chain concept has been around for more than 10 years, the strategic power of this concept has not been well articulated. based on an extensive literature search, we were not able to find even one complete, empirically derived

7、 value chain for a firm. there is a clear need to begin to document real world examples of how the value chain framework provides strategic insights that are unlikely to emerge from other frameworks. we believe it is important to begin to bring this perspective into the domain of managerial accounti

8、ng. this paper is an attempt to begin to fill this need.strategic power of the value chain analysis-the basicswhether or not a firm can develop and sustain differentiation and/or cost advantage depends fundamentally on the configuration of its value chain relative to the value chain configuration of

9、 each of its competitors. we believe porter1985 is correct when he argues that competitive advantage in the marketplace ultimately derives from providing better customer value for equivalent cost or equivalent customer value for a lower cost. from this perspective, value chain analysis is essential

10、to determine exactly where in the firms segment of the chainfrom design to distributioncustomer value can be enhanced or costs lowered. as argued by shank 1989, ignoring linkages upstream from the firm as well as downstream is just too restrictive a perspective.danger of ignoring value chain linkage

11、sthe value chain framework is a method for breaking down the chain of activities that runs from basic raw materials to end-use customers into strategically relevant segments in order to understand the behavior of costs and the sources of differentiation. as noted earlier, a firm is typically only a

12、part of the larger set of activities in the value creation and delivery system. since no two firms of which we are aware, even in the same industry. compete in exactly the same set of markets with exactly the same set of suppliers, the overall value chain for each firm is unique. suppliers not only

13、produce and deliver inputs used in a firms value activities, but they importantly influence the firms cost/differentiation position. for example, developments by steel mini-mills lowered the operating costs of wire products users who are the customers of the customers of the mini mill 2 stages down

14、the value chain. similarly, customers actions can have a significant impact on the firms value activities. for example, when printing press manufacturers create a new press of 3 meters width, the profitability of paper mills is affected, because paper machine widths must match some multiple of print

15、ing press width. mill profit is affected by customer actions even though the paper mill is 2 stages upstream from the printer who is a customer of the press manufacturer! as we will discuss more fully below, gaining and sustaining competitive advantage requires that a firm understand the entire valu

16、e creation and delivery system, no(just the portion of the value chain in which it participates. suppliers and customers and suppliers suppliers and customers customers have profit margins that are important to identify in understanding a firms cost/differentiation positioning, since the end-use cus

17、tomers ultimately pay for all theprofit margins along the entire value chain.value chain versus value added analysisthe value chain concept can be contrasted with the internal focus that is often adopted in management accounting, as alluded to in the quote at the outset of this paper. management acc

18、ounting, as explained in leading textbooks, usually takes a value-added perspective, starting with payments to suppliers (purchases), and stopping with charges to customers (sales). the key theme is to maximize the differencethe value-added between purchases and sales, under the assumption that this

19、 is the only way a firm can influence profits. we argue that the value chainnot value addedis the more meaningful way to explore strategic issues. value added analysis, in which the firm focuses only on its own operations in lookingfor profit enhancement opportunities, can be quite misleading in two

20、 ways:the value-added concept starts too late. starting cost analysis with purchases misses all the opportunities for exploiting linkages with the firms suppliers. the word exploit does not imply that the relationship with the supplier is a zero sum game. quite the contrary, it implies that the link

21、 should be managed so that both the firm and its supplier can benefit. for instance, when bulk chocolate began to be delivered in liquid form in tank cars instead of ten pound molded bars, an industrial chocolate firm (i.e. the supplier) eliminated the cost of molding bars and packing them and a con

22、fectionery producer saved the cost of unpacking and melting porter, 1985.in addition to starting too late, the value-added analysis has another major flaw; it stops too soon. stopping cost analysis at sales misses all the opportunities for exploiting linkages with the firms customers. here again, we

23、 contend that the relationship with the customer need not be a zero sum game, but one in which both parties can gain. for instance, some container producers have constructed manufacturing facilities next to beer breweries and deliver the containers through overhead conveyers directly onto the custom

24、ers assembly line. this results in significant cost reductions for both the container producers and their customers by expediting the transport of empty containers which are bulky and heavy hergert and morris, 1989.the value chain framework highlights how a firms products fit into the buyers value c

25、hain. for instance, under the value chain framework, it is readily apparent what percentage the firms product costs are in the buyers total costs. the fact that paper constitutes over 40 percent of the total costs of a magazine is significant in encouraging the paper mill and the publisher to work t

26、ogether in cost reduction activities. the san francisco chronicle recently adopted jit for paper delivery to its printing plant, a program only possible with close supplier cooperation. since the value-added concept ignores activities after the product leaves the firm, it often does not highlight th

27、e degree of buyer power.emphasizing the interdependence of linked activities along a value chainvalue chain analysis explicitly recognizes the fact that the individual value activities within a firm are not independent, but rather are interdependent. for instance, at mcdonalds, the timing of promoti

28、onal campaigns (one value activity) significantly influences capacity utilization in production (another value activity). these linked activities must be coordinated if the full effect of the promotion is to be realized. as another example, japanese vcr producers were able to reduce retail prices fr

29、om $1,300 in 1977 to $298 by 1984 by emphasizing the impact of an early step in the chain (product design) on a later step (production) by drastically reducing the number of parts in vcrs hergert and morris, 19891. it is common to hear of conventional approaches to cost reduction which emphasize acr

30、oss-the-board cuts. however, by recognizing interlinkages, the value chain analysis highlights the possibility that deliberately increasing costs in one value activity can bring about a reduction in total costs. the expense incurred by p & g to place its order entry computers directly in walmart sto

31、res significantly reduces overall order entry and processing costs for both firms.calculational difficultieswe do not wish to imply that constructing a value chain for a firm is easy. there are several thorny problems to confront: calculating a value for intermediate products, isolating key cost dri

32、vers, identifying linkages across activities, and computing supplier and customer margins.the analysis starts by segmenting the chain into those components for which some firm somewhere does make a market, even if other firms do not. this will catch the segments outlined in exhibit 1 for the paper i

33、ndustry, for example. one could start the process by identifying every point in the chain at which an external market exists. this gives a good first cut at identifying the value chain segments. one can always find some narrow enough stage such that an external market does not exist. an example woul

34、d be the progress of a roll of paper from the last press section of a paper machine to the first dryer section on the same machine. there is obviously no external market for paper halfway through a continuous flow paper machine! thus, seeing the press section and the dryer section of the paper machi

35、ne as separate stages in the value chain is probably not operational.part of the art of strategic analysis is deciding which stages in the value chain can meaningfully be decoupled conceptually and which cannot. unless some firm somewhere has decoupled a stage by making a market at that stage, one c

36、annot independently assess the economic profit earned at that stage. but the opportunities for meaningful analysis across a set of firms that have defined differently what they make versus what they buy and what they sell are often very significant. the fact that this is not always possible does not

37、, in our view, negate the significance when it is possible.despite the calculational problems, we contend that every firm should attempt to estimate its value chain. even the process of performing the value chain analysis, in and by itself, can be quite instructive. in our experience, we have found

38、this exercise invaluable to managers by forcing them to carefully evaluate how their activities add value to the chain of customers who use their product (service).we present below a case study from our field research (the name of the company and the financial data are disguised) which we believe il

39、lustrates the strategic power of a value chain analysis.the business settingnortham packaging company produced 206,000 tons of coated paperboard in 1989. this paperboard was sold to consumer product firms (processors) who formed the paperboard into cartons, then filled and sealed them for shipment t

40、o retail outlets. northam served two market segments. in 1989, 146,000 tons of the companys output went to commodity product firms for whom the carton was just a box. for these firms, price is the major purchase characteristic, assuming normal quality and service.the company had 40 percent market sh

41、are in this segment. these processors products were considered commodities because they did not have an ability to achieve a price premium for the brand name. these processors were typically smaller in size. northam sold to over 300 customers in this segment. overall sales in this segment had declin

42、ed 3 percent per year over the last five years, but were believed to have stabilized in 1989. the second customer segment, to whom northam sold 60,000 tons of paperboard in 1989, was high quality, differentiated processors for whom the carton was an important element of the marketing strategy. north

43、am had a 15 percent market share in this segment. these processors were typically larger in size. northam sold to only six customers in this segment. this segment was growing at approximately 10 percent per year, and was projected to grow even faster in the future. the quality of the packaging mater

44、ial (strength, durability, and printability) was particularly important for this segment since the carton was a point-of-sale merchandising aid for the differentiated products. northams market share in this segment had declined over time. customers attributed the decline to northams inability to con

45、sistently produce the high quality board this segment demands.northam was one of four major competitors in the coated paperboard industry. because of the scale, technology, and integration economies of these firms, new entrants were effectively shut out.substitutesplastic was the major substitution

46、threat to the manufacturers of coated paperboard. shell chemical and hoover international (now johnson controls) had changed the consumer packaging industry overnight in 1965 when they combined to introduce the plastic resin pellet and the blow molding machine to manufacture plastic cartons. at firs

47、t, the polyethylene pellets, supplied by shell chemical, were quite expensive. but, the blow molding machine was so easy to use that plastic made steady inroads into the consumer packaging industry. however, there were several reasons why coated paperboard continued to be used.first, although plasti

48、c was more economical when the price of plastic resin was low, high plastic resin prices made coated board look good. guessing future levels of ethylene gas prices (the basic driver of polyethylene price) was a notoriously difficult task. second, processors did not want to be at the total mercy of o

49、il companies. by using dual suppliers, processors created a hedge against the volatile price of plastic resin. for instance, in1988, a fire in a shell refinery in louisiana destroyed 30 percent of the polyethylene pellet supply in the u.s. overnight and forced many processors who had largely convert

50、ed to plastic back to coated board. third, as new uses of the plastic resin were created (industrial and consumer uses of plastic containers), the input price was bound to go up. fourth, since plastic was just a by-product for the oil companies, there was no real assurance of supply. finally, enviro

51、nmental indignation over plastic jugs was heating up. they were being outlawed in many states because of problems with burning them or dumping in landfills. the most populous county in the u.s., suffolk county on long island, passed legislation in 1987 banning plastic cartons from its landfills.cost

52、 structureone way to understand northams position is to analyze and discuss the process flow from basic raw material sources through to the ultimate end-use product delivered into the final customers hands. however, in order to keep this paper to manageable length, we focus our discussion on the pap

53、er mill, extrusion, and conversion stages of the chain which relate to northam. the timber, logging, chipping and pulp mill stages are deemphasized because they are not critical to the issues addressed here. obviously, the full value chain would consider these stages as well.source:shank ,govindaraj

54、an,1992. “strategic cost management: the value chain perspective”. journal of management accounting research .vol.4, pp.179-197.译文：战略成本管理：价值链的视角战略成本管理（scm）的主要主题之一是关于成本管理工作。问题的形式表示：我们如何组织我们对成本的管理思想？在供应链管理框架的外部公司，有效地控制成本需要一个宽阔的焦点。波特1985已经把这种现象称之为“价值链”。“价值链”是在任何商业企业是创造价值的原料来源，从基本的活动，一路过关斩将，最终以终端产品进交付到消

55、费者手中的链接集。这个重点是外部的公司，看到每一个在价值创造活动的总体链背景下的企业，它很可能只是一部分。据我们所知，他们的经营意识是没有企业跨越整个价值链。中石油的价值链广泛横跨在其经营领域，从石油勘探到服务站，雪佛龙等公司，但它不跨越整个链条。它的百分之五十原油提炼来自其他生产者，三分之一以上的石油提炼是通过其他零售店铺出售。此外，雪佛龙不是在所有汽车行业汽油的主要用户。更狭窄，诸如maxus的能源公司只有在石油勘探和生产业务。有限商店是很大的“下游”零售网点，但没有自己的生产设施。锐步公司是著名的鞋业品牌，但很少有公司拥有零售网点。但是，锐步确实有自己的工厂。虽然价值链的概念已经超过10

56、年了，这个概念的战略力量一直没有得到很好的阐述。在广泛的文献检索基础上，我们没有能够找到一个公司可以得出一个完整经验的价值链。显然需要有一个文件如何开始提供战略价值链框架的见解，是不可能摆脱其他框架的现实世界的例子。从这个角度来看，我们相信，重要的是要开始纳入管理会计领域。本文试图开始，以填补这方面的需要。从战略力量的基础上对价值链分析一个企业怎样能够发展和保持分化和/或成本优势，根本上取决于它的价值链相对于竞争对手的每一个价值链的配置。我们相信波特1985是正确的，他得出结论说，他认为在市场上最终从一个较低的成本提供更好的成本或相当于同等价值的客户的竞争优势。从这个角度来看，价值链分析是必不

57、可少的，以确定究竟在该公司的连锁从设计到销售，客户价值，可增强或细分市场，降低成本。正如珊克1989 的视角，不顾企业以及上游下游之间太限制性的联系。危险忽视价值链联系价值链框架打破运行的活动链，从基本原料进战略相关部门到最终客户使用，以了解成本行为和分化源的方法。如前所述，一个公司通常只有一部分在价值创造和交付系统活动。而我们都知道，由于在同一行业没有两家公司是一样的。正是在同一组的市场竞争中完全相同的供应商对每个企业的整体价值链是独一无二的。供应商不仅投入生产和提供一个企业的价值活动，他们重要的是影响企业的成本/分化的地位。例如，钢铁的“小工厂”的发展降低了产品用户线的经营成本，谁是微型磨

58、的客户向下价值链阶段。同样，客户的行为可能对公司的价值活动产生重大影响。例如，当印刷机制造商新创造了“3米的”宽度造纸机，这样在造纸厂的盈利能力将受到影响，因为造纸机的宽度必须符合某些印刷机宽度的倍数。利润受到客户行动的影响，即使是在阶段造纸厂从打印机客户的印刷机制造商的上游！正如我们下面将更充分讨论，获得和维持竞争优势，需要了解一个企业整个价值创造和交付系统，仅仅是参与价值链中的一部分。供应商，客户和供应商的利润率，来确定有重要意义的理解一个公司的成本/分化定位，因为最终使客户付出一切利润在整个价值链的空间。价值链与价值增值分析价值链的概念，可与内部的焦点，往往是在管理会计通过对比，如在报价

59、提到的本文件开头。管理会计，正如在领先的教科书，通常需要从一个“增值”的角度来看，开始与供应商（购买）支付，并与客户（销售）的停车收费。关键主题是在最大限度地差异，增值，购买和销售之间的假设下，这是唯一的方式可以影响公司利润。我们认为，价值链不是增值，是更有意义的方式来探讨战略问题。价值增值分析，其中重点是该公司自己的业务只在看利润提升的机会，可以相当有两种方式误导：本增值概念开始为时已晚。开始进行采购成本分析并利用该公司供应商联系的所有机会。这个“漏洞”并不意味着与供应商的关系是零和游戏。恰恰相反，它意味着这个连接应该进行管理，以便这两个公司和其供应商可以受惠。例如，当巧克力开始被大量的液态形式提供以槽车代替十磅模压棒材，工业巧克力公司（即供应商）淘汰成型和包装他们酒吧的成本和糖果生产商节省了成本拆包和熔融波特，1985年。除了开