THE DEVELOPMENT AND APPLICATION OF A DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEM FOR ACTIVITY-BASED COSTING

ABSTRACT This research is based on the Activity-based Costing (ABC) methodology and the object-oriented technology to analyze, design, and implement cost objects, such as resource, activity, and database, in the manufacturing systems for the construction of a rudiment of a cost database. Then, a Decision Support System (DSS) based on the object-orient database is built to computerize the calculating procedure of ABC and to show the manufacturing cost structure of different products. The DSS can be divided into various cost management modules to assist decision making of different manufacturing alternatives. The Value Engineering module is built into the DSS to illustrate the comparison of alternative system operation policies for the continuous improvement of the manufacturing system. The application of the DSS to a semi-conductor test plant is used to demonstrate its capability.