TIME-DRIVEN ACTIVITY BASED COSTING AS A BASIS FOR UNDERTAKING LEAN ACTIVITIES

Background: A constantly escalating market competition, new techniques and technologies development, as well as the aspiration to adapt to the dynamically changing market situation, forces the entrepreneurs to search and implement new methods of managing firms. For this reason, the effort is made to calculate, applying the Time-Driven Activity Based Costing analysis, the logistics costs of the client service process in the sphere of traditional and Internet trade. The aim of the article was to find answers to the following questions: 1. Is the use of T-D ABC method in the service sector (electronic warehouse) may indicate areas where the waste arises? 2. What financial benefits can bring such kind of identification in the context of waste elimination in accordance with the concept of Lean Management?

Methods: The research was conducted at a service enterprise, which is an electronic warehouse. The article presents the exact procedure of cost calculation according to the T-D ABC method. The work includes identification of the activities, undertaken by the employees in the process of clients’ orders realization, calculation of their costs using the T-D ABC methodology and improvements that were made within the context of Lean Management concept.

Results: The paper presents theoretical knowledge concerning the T-D ABC method and the Lean Management concept. The steps for calculating the cost of processes are described, their analysis is carried out and the Lean activities are proposed – aimed at organizing the processes and shortening their duration. 

Conclusions: The integration of T-D ABC and the Lean Management enables to implementation of the first steps towards the eradication of wasting money, identification of unused capacities, detection of potential of the resources involved, as well as makes it possible to identify the places of saving costs in the processes. The suggested example of costs calculation can be successfully used both at service enterprises and at the production ones.