Product Costing in the Swedish Engineering Industry - a survey 

This thesis is about product costing in the Swedish engineering industry. The thesis is empirical and consists of two studies, one descriptive and one explanatory study. The purpose of the descriptive study has been to make a survey of which product costing methods are used, which elements of product costing that are considered to be problematic and what companies spend time on related to product costing. The purpose of the explanatory study has been to compare and analyze the correspondence between literature and practice regarding design aspects of product costing, by using a contingency theoretical approach. The research method that has been used to collect data has been an e-mail survey. In the 90s, a dissertation was written by Urban Ask and Christian Ax in the area, but since then no major survey has been made either in Sweden or in any other country. Since the 1990s, the production environment has been developed and new production strategies have been implemented, which has contributed to new perspectives on product costing.

The results of the descriptive study show that the recommendations given in "Enhetliga principer för självkostnadsberäkningar" (EP) in 1936 still have a large impact on Swedish product costing practices. On the other hand, a trend can be noted which indicates that companies choose to work with new product costing systems such as target costing, activity based costing, value stream costing and kaizen costing. With regard to the allocation of indirect costs, the results show that the companies focus on ensuring that the allocation takes place in an appropriate manner. The outcome of the results shows that the distribution of indirect costs is differentiated, in the majority of cases a number of allocation bases, overhead components and cost centers are used. The product costing elements that are perceived to be most problematic to perform in practice are to: determine causal relationships, determine what deviations from standards are due to and calculate costs for future products. Overall the findings in the descriptive study indicate on a technically speaking well-developed Swedish costing practice. The explanatory study lends support to the hypotheses that the design of cost systems depends on contingency factors. Strongest support for the hypotheses was found between two factors (production strategies and company size) and cost system aspects. Weaker support was found between six other factors (manufacturing complexity, number of products, kind of product, the degree of automation, high- vs low-tech companies and the degree of competition) and cost system aspects. Overall the findings in the explanatory study indicate that companies do not shape their product costing according to the recommendations made in the literature.