1、原文：Strategic Cost Management: TheValue Chain PerspectiveOne of the major themes in strategic cost management (SCM) concerns the focus of cost management efforts. Stated in question form: How do we organize our thinking about cost management? In the SCM framework, managing costs effectively requires
2、a broad focus, external to the firm. Porter 19851 has called this the value chain. The Value chain for any firm in any business is the linked set of value-creating activities all the way from basic raw material sources through to the ultimate end-use product delivered into the final consumers hands.
3、 This focus is external to the firm, seeing each firm in the context of the overall chain of value-creating activities of which it is very probably only a part. We are aware of no firms which span the entire value chain in which they operate.A firm such as Chevron in petroleum spans wide segments of
4、 the value chain in which it operates, from oil exploration to service stations, but it does not span the entire chain. Fifty percent of the crude oil it refines comes from other producers, and more than one third of the oil it refines is sold through other retail outlets. Also, Chevron is not in th
5、e auto business at all, the major user of gasoline. More narrowly, a firm such as Maxus Energy is only in the oil exploration and production business. The Limited Stores are big downstream in retail outlets but own no manufacturing facilities. Reebok Is a famous shoe brand, but the firm owns very fe
6、w retail outlets. Reebok does, however, own its factories.Though the value chain concept has been around for more than 10 years, the strategic power of this concept has not been well articulated. Based on an extensive literature search, we were not able to find even one complete, empirically derived
7、 value chain for a firm. There is a clear need to begin to document real world examples of how the value chain framework provides strategic Insights that are unlikely to emerge from other frameworks. We believe it is important to begin to bring this perspective into the domain of managerial accounti
8、ng. This paper is an attempt to begin to fill this need.Strategic power of the value chain analysis-the basicsWhether or not a firm can develop and sustain differentiation and/or cost advantage depends fundamentally on the configuration of its value chain relative to the value chain configuration of
9、 each of its competitors. We believe Porter1985 is correct when he argues that competitive advantage in the marketplace ultimately derives from providing better customer value for equivalent cost or equivalent customer value for a lower cost. From this perspective, value chain analysis is essential
10、to determine exactly where in the firms segment of the chainfrom design to distributioncustomer value can be enhanced or costs lowered. As argued by Shank 1989, ignoring linkages upstream from the firm as well as downstream is just too restrictive a perspective.Danger of Ignoring Value Chain Linkage
11、sThe value chain framework is a method for breaking down the chain of activities that runs from basic raw materials to end-use customers into strategically relevant segments In order to understand the behavior of costs and the sources of differentiation. As noted earlier, a firm is typically only a
12、part of the larger set of activities in the value creation and delivery system. Since no two firms of which we are aware, even in the same industry. compete in exactly the same set of markets with exactly the same set of suppliers, the overall value chain for each firm is unique. Suppliers not only
13、produce and deliver Inputs used in a firms value activities, but they importantly influence the firms cost/differentiation position. For example, developments by steel mini-mills lowered the operating costs of wire products users who are the customers of the customers of the mini mill 2 stages down
14、the value chain. Similarly, customers actions can have a significant Impact on the firms value activities. For example, when printing press manufacturers create a new press of 3 meters width, the profitability of paper mills is affected, because paper machine widths must match some multiple of print
15、ing press width. Mill profit is affected by customer actions even though the paper mill is 2 stages upstream from the printer who is a customer of the press manufacturer! As we will discuss more fully below, gaining and sustaining competitive advantage requires that a firm understand the entire valu
16、e creation and delivery system, no(just the portion of the value chain In which it participates. Suppliers and customers and suppliers suppliers and customers customers have profit margins that are important to identify in understanding a firms cost/differentiation positioning, since the end-use cus
17、tomers ultimately pay for all theprofit margins along the entire value chain.Value Chain versus Value Added AnalysisThe value chain concept can be contrasted with the internal focus that is often adopted in management accounting, as alluded to in the quote at the outset of this paper. Management acc
18、ounting, as explained In leading textbooks, usually takes a value-added perspective, starting with payments to suppliers (purchases), and stopping with charges to customers (sales). The key theme is to maximize the differencethe value-added between purchases and sales, under the assumption that this
19、 is the only way a firm can influence profits. We argue that the value chainnot value addedis the more meaningful way to explore strategic issues. Value added analysis, in which the firm focuses only on its own operations in lookingfor profit enhancement opportunities, can be quite misleading in two
20、 ways:The value-added concept starts too late. Starting cost analysis with purchases misses all the opportunities for exploiting linkages with the firms suppliers. The word exploit does not imply that the relationship with the supplier is a zero sum game. Quite the contrary, it implies that the link
21、 should be managed so that both the firm and its supplier can benefit. For instance, when bulk chocolate began to be delivered in liquid form in tank cars instead of ten pound molded bars, an industrial chocolate firm (i.e. the supplier) eliminated the cost of molding bars and packing them and a con
22、fectionery producer saved the cost of unpacking and melting Porter, 1985.In addition to starting too late, the value-added analysis has another major flaw; it stops too soon. Stopping cost analysis at sales misses all the opportunities for exploiting linkages with the firms customers. Here again, we
23、 contend that the relationship with the customer need not be a zero sum game, but one in which both parties can gain. For instance, some container producers have constructed manufacturing facilities next to beer breweries and deliver the containers through overhead conveyers directly onto the custom
24、ers assembly line. This results in significant cost reductions for both the container producers and their customers by expediting the transport of empty containers which are bulky and heavy Hergert and Morris, 1989.The value chain framework highlights how a firms products fit into the buyers value c
25、hain. For instance, under the value chain framework, it is readily apparent what percentage the firms product costs are in the buyers total costs. The fact that paper constitutes over 40 percent of the total costs of a magazine is significant in encouraging the paper mill and the publisher to work t
26、ogether in cost reduction activities. The San Francisco Chronicle recently adopted JIT for paper delivery to its printing plant, a program only possible with close supplier cooperation. Since the value-added concept ignores activities after the product leaves the firm, it often does not highlight th
27、e degree of buyer power.Emphasizing the Interdependence of Linked Activities Along a Value ChainValue chain analysis explicitly recognizes the fact that the individual value activities within a firm are not independent, but rather are interdependent. For instance, at McDonalds, the timing of promoti
28、onal campaigns (one value activity) significantly influences capacity utilization in production (another value activity). These linked activities must be coordinated if the full effect of the promotion is to be realized. As another example, Japanese VCR producers were able to reduce retail prices fr
29、om $1,300 in 1977 to $298 by 1984 by emphasizing the impact of an early step in the chain (product design) on a later step (production) by drastically reducing the number of parts in VCRs Hergert and Morris, 19891. It is common to hear of conventional approaches to cost reduction which emphasize acr
30、oss-the-board cuts. However, by recognizing interlinkages, the value chain analysis highlights the possibility that deliberately increasing costs in one value activity can bring about a reduction in total costs. The expense incurred by P & G to place its order entry computers directly in Walmart sto
31、res significantly reduces overall order entry and processing costs for both firms.Calculational DifficultiesWe do not wish to imply that constructing a value chain for a firm is easy. There are several thorny problems to confront: calculating a value for intermediate products, isolating key cost dri
32、vers, identifying linkages across activities, and computing supplier and customer margins.The analysis starts by segmenting the chain into those components for which some firm somewhere does make a market, even if other firms do not. This will catch the segments outlined in Exhibit 1 for the paper i
33、ndustry, for example. One could start the process by identifying every point in the chain at which an external market exists. This gives a good first cut at identifying the value chain segments. One can always find some narrow enough stage such that an external market does not exist. An example woul
34、d be the progress of a roll of paper from the last press section of a paper machine to the first dryer section on the same machine. There is obviously no external market for paper halfway through a continuous flow paper machine! Thus, seeing the press section and the dryer section of the paper machi
35、ne as separate stages in the value chain is probably not operational.Part of the art of strategic analysis is deciding which stages in the value chain can meaningfully be decoupled conceptually and which cannot. Unless some firm somewhere has decoupled a stage by making a market at that stage, one c
36、annot independently assess the economic profit earned at that stage. But the opportunities for meaningful analysis across a set of firms that have defined differently what they make versus what they buy and what they sell are often very significant. The fact that this is not always possible does not
37、, in our view, negate the significance when it is possible.Despite the calculational problems, we contend that every firm should attempt to estimate its value chain. Even the process of performing the value chain analysis, in and by itself, can be quite instructive. In our experience, we have found
38、this exercise invaluable to managers by forcing them to carefully evaluate how their activities add value to the chain of customers who use their product (service).We present below a case study from our field research (the name of the company and the financial data are disguised) which we believe il
39、lustrates the strategic power of a value chain analysis.The Business SettingNorthAm Packaging Company produced 206,000 tons of coated paperboard in 1989. This paperboard was sold to consumer product firms (processors) who formed the paperboard into cartons, then filled and sealed them for shipment t
40、o retail outlets. NorthAm served two market segments. In 1989, 146,000 tons of the companys output went to commodity product firms for whom the carton was Just a box. For these firms, price is the major purchase characteristic, assuming normal quality and service.The company had 40 percent market sh
41、are in this segment. These processors products were considered commodities because they did not have an ability to achieve a price premium for the brand name. These processors were typically smaller in size. NorthAm sold to over 300 customers in this segment. Overall sales in this segment had declin
42、ed 3 percent per year over the last five years, but were believed to have stabilized in 1989. The second customer segment, to whom NorthAm sold 60,000 tons of paperboard in 1989, was high quality, differentiated processors for whom the carton was an important element of the marketing strategy. North
43、Am had a 15 percent market share in this segment. These processors were typically larger in size. NorthAm sold to only six customers in this segment. This segment was growing at approximately 10 percent per year, and was projected to grow even faster in the future. The quality of the packaging mater
44、ial (strength, durability, and printability) was particularly important for this segment since the carton was a point-of-sale merchandising aid for the differentiated products. NorthAms market share in this segment had declined over time. Customers attributed the decline to NorthAms inability to con
45、sistently produce the high quality board this segment demands.NorthAm was one of four major competitors in the coated paperboard industry. Because of the scale, technology, and integration economies of these firms, new entrants were effectively shut out.SubstitutesPlastic was the major substitution
46、threat to the manufacturers of coated paperboard. Shell Chemical and Hoover International (now Johnson Controls) had changed the consumer packaging industry overnight in 1965 when they combined to introduce the plastic resin pellet and the blow molding machine to manufacture plastic cartons. At firs
47、t, the polyethylene pellets, supplied by Shell Chemical, were quite expensive. But, the blow molding machine was so easy to use that plastic made steady inroads into the consumer packaging industry. However, there were several reasons why coated paperboard continued to be used.First, although plasti
48、c was more economical when the price of plastic resin was low, high plastic resin prices made coated board look good. Guessing future levels of ethylene gas prices (the basic driver of polyethylene price) was a notoriously difficult task. Second, processors did not want to be at the total mercy of o
49、il companies. By using dual suppliers, processors created a hedge against the volatile price of plastic resin. For instance, in1988, a fire in a Shell refinery in Louisiana destroyed 30 percent of the polyethylene pellet supply in the U.S. overnight and forced many processors who had largely converted to plastic back to coated board. Third, as new uses of the plastic resin were created (industrial and consumer uses of plastic containers), the input price was bound to go
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