Factory overhead

Abstract: The costs of human resources vary across industries, but in knowledge organizations, they typically comprise more than half of total operating costs. The costs of benefits and overhead easily can add another 75 percent to base pay. Although organizations incur HR costs in a number of key areas, one of the most common ones is employee absenteeism. The total cost absenteeism is comprised of three broad categories of costs: those associated with absentees themselves, the costs of managing absenteeism problems, and all other relevant costs. Free, Web – based software is available to do these calculations. Keywords: absenteeism, costs of; benefits, costs of in U.S.; costs, overhead; costs, of labor; human resources, costs of; labor-cost multiplier; software, to tally HR costs

Abstract: SYNOPSIS AND INTRODUCTION: Recent research on cost driver analysis by Miller and Vollman (1985) and Cooper and Kaplan (1987) suggests that transactions deriving from the diversity of a firm's product line and the complexity of its production process, in addition to output volume, drive overhead costs. As a consequence, it is argued, conventional cost accounting systems based only on volume-related measures, such as units of output, direct labor hours, or machine hours, produce biased and materially misleading cost estimates for managerial decisions on price and product line (whether to continue or discontinue products, or to offer additional products). Systematic biases in cost estimates may also lead to distortions in flexible budgeting systems, variance analyses, and responsibility-accounting systems. Perhaps more important in the long run, omission of operationsbased cost drivers may distort the investigation of the likely effects on costs of changes in operating strategies. Many firms have moved ahead on the basis of this perceived need for more accurate cost estimates and have designed and implemented activitybased costing systems (Schiff 1991). From an academic perspective, however, there is a need for further formal empirical research in this field. Cooper and Kaplan's (1987) evidence is based on field-study discussions with managers in a variety of manufacturing settings and experimentation with cost allocation and product-costing systems based on transactions. Foster and Gupta (1990) provide some of the first empirical evidence on the correlation of manufacturing overhead with output volume and operations-based measures that reflect characteristics of the manufacturing process. Using data obtained from 37 plants of a single manufacturing firm, Foster and Gupta found that most of the volume-related measures of output