This book is designed to introduce designers, engineers, technologists, estimators, project managers, and financial analysts as well as students in engineering and business to strategic cost tools for project cost evaluations. The three main sections are as follows. (1) Cost Relationships, Financial Statements, and Performance Measures—This section describes the relationships between cash flows and profits; the relationships between financial statements and the Purcell Diagram; and the issues of cost estimating, time-based breakeven analysis and time-based earned schedule. (2) Tools for Economic Evaluations—This section considers the basic mathematical relations used behind the economic equations and factors; discrete and continuous interest; depreciation terms and methods; and the Present Value of Principal Approach for evaluating loans. (3) Methods for Project Evaluation and Risk Analysis—This section considers payback periods, present worth analysis, return on investment, internal rate of return, benefit/cost ratios and positive-negative project balances; risk techniques of sensitivity analysis, optimistic-pessimistic analysis, discrete probability examples, and continuous probability models using the normal and triangular distributions.

An accessible, practical survey of cost management methods Essentials of Cost Management provides an unbiased survey and explanation of the cost management approaches and methods currently available for immediate application in day-to-day activities. Rather than advocate a particular method, this book assists readers in choosing the best approach or blend of cost management strategies to address specific business problems. The expert authors also discuss cutting-edge topics such as target costing, capacity management, and activity-based costing/management.

An indispensable guide for managers concerned with cost, strategy, and business re-engineering. Experts on the strategic use of cost data, the authors show how stategic cost management is revolutionizing accounting practices in leading companies. Includes numerous examples. 120 line drawings.

This open access book clarifies confusions of strategy that have existed for nearly 40 years through the core thoughts of three fundamental elements. Unlike the traditional definition of strategy as "a plan to achieve a long-term goal from overall considerations”in a linear view, this book defines strategy from non-linear viewpoint as it is in the real world. The art of a strategy lies not only in the determination of development goals, but also in the identification of development problems and putting forward overall guiding ideology of solving problems. Rich illustrations as well as numerous business and military cases are presented in helping readers to understand the fundamental elements of strategy.The general scope of the book includes introductions to the three fundamental elements of strategy, three-sub decisions of a complete strategic decision, incomplete strategies, relationship between tactic and strategy, three elements of competitive and corporative strategies. There may be biases in company-level, real strategic decision-making which makes a complete strategy not necessarily a perfect one. The book introduces biases and reasons for the biases, helping industrial strategic decision-makers understand the importance of knowing the nature of the company, the industry and its environment. In addition, this book also presents principles and evaluation approaches of strategic decisions, explores the reasons for the excessive definitions of the strategy concept, and discusses directions of future’s research tasks.The book will benefit business managers who are interested in knowing what a complete strategic decision is and how to avoid errors or biases in strategic decision-making. It also benefits students in business schools (especially in MBA/EMBA programs) who are (or will be) on executive positions. Academic researchers may find it is interesting to understand strategy from the view of the three elements. The new view provides a novel insight into strategy and promotes several research directions in the future. The three elements of strategy are also applicable to military strategies and readers who are interested in military and may find its value as well.

The authors have kept the text concise by focusing on the key concepts students need to master. Opening vignettes & 'in action' boxes show realistic applications of these concepts throughout. Comprehensive end-of-chapter problems provide students with all the practice they need to fully learn each concept.