Enhancing the efficiency of logistics costs by integrating the contemporary costing methods: An application in an export company

In a field such as logistics that is very crucial for the world economy where severe competition takes place and contains relation with many sectors and connected operations in itself, the need for accurate and detailed cost information is constantly increasing in parallel with technological change. As a result of globalization and progress in information technologies, the expectation from logistic sector is not only to carry out logistics activities but perform optimally in terms of time, line, amount and cost. Companies bear significant logistics cost during the process of carrying out extensive and detailed logistics activities. Therefore, the accurate evaluation of logistics costs is very important for companies in order to ensure cost minimisation. At that point, integration of contemporary costing methods can be a useful tool while evaluating and optimising logistics cost. Research related to logistics cost literature in Turkish, in which contemporary costing methods are used integrally, do not exist. The purpose of the dissertation is to reveal how integration of target costing, value analysis, kaizen costing and theory of constraints decreases logistics cost by using case study method. Researcher has constituted a model after interviews with company managers and logistics personnel and observing all logistics activities process. Moreover, survey that is evaluating logistics activities within the scope of value analysis, has been applied to all staff of logistics department personnel. As a result of application of research model and evaluation of survey, primary by using target costing, 160.555,13 TL logistics cost decrease has been calculated, secondary, the importance level of each logistics activity has been determined. Afterwards, how much cost of sub logistics activities could be decreased has been determined by applying kaizen-costing method. Then, constraints of company's packaging activity has been determined and solved by using theory of constraints, hence, efficiency of logistics cost has been provided.