Strategic Cost Management in Supply Chains, Part 2: Executional Cost Management

SYNOPSIS: Strategic cost management is the deliberate alignment of a firm’s resources and associated cost structure with long-term strategy and short-term tactics. Although managers continue to pursue efficiency and effectiveness within the firm, increasingly, improvements are obtained across the value chain, through reconfiguring firm boundaries, relocating resources, reengineering processes, and reevaluating product and service offerings in relation to customer requirements. The first paper in this two-part series reviewed structural cost management in supply chains (Anderson and Dekker 2009). Structural cost management employs tools of organizational design, product design, and process design to create a supply chain cost structure that is coherent with firm strategy. In this second paper of the series we consider executional cost management in supply chains. Executional cost management employs measurement and analysis tools (e.g., cost driver analysis, supplier scorecards) to evaluate supply chain performance and sustainability. Using selected studies in accounting, operations management, and business strategy, we provide an overview of strategic cost management in supply chains, highlight contemporary developments, and suggest directions for future research.