Visual representation of costs in the productive process: a case study on a footwear industry in Portugal

Abstract

Over the last decades, conventional production systems have gone through changes in the face of intensified competition among companies. The occurrence of these changes has boosted the development of decision-making assistance tools for the production systems. However, most of these instruments do not allow the visualization of the costs involved throughout industrial operations. This study comprises the integration of the "Waste Identification Diagrams" (WID), current tool for visualization and analysis of production processes, along with "Time-Driven Activity-Based Costing" (TDABC), strategic management cost tool, seeking to create a model that visually demonstrates waste and relate its occurrence to operating costs. For that, the research adopted a descriptive-exploratory approach, based on a case study carried out in a footwear industry. The analysis showed that the integration of tools allowed for the representation of costs based on the time equations from the TDABC, associated with the visualization of the production process by the WID. The study concludes that the WID can be integrated to the TDABC tool, creating a management model for making decisions based on the operating costs of the production process.