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My work is largely based on my Ph.D.
work and master degree work. That is, I am involved in the following
type of work and problems (several are more or less interrelated):
 | Product- and process design. It is often
said that in design (particularly product design) the biggest impact on costs,
quality, environmental performance and time can be made. In fact,
roughly 80% of total production costs is directly related to the design of a
product/service. There are many methods for use in product design and
they should be adjusted to the various situations, it is therefore important
to understand what needs to be done. |
| Performance measurement in a wide sense. Performance measurement is
the very foundation of modern management and design. As the saying
goes; "what gets measured, gets managed". The point is to design
a system of simple, yet relevant, measures that give decision makers relevant
feedback w.r.t. objectives, goals and strategies. The Balanced
Scorecard is an important method in this context as is
economic profit. |
| Modern cost management has reached far both on strategic and tactical
level with approaches such as
Activity-Based Costing (ABC)
and Target Costing. Target Costing apply
mostly on strategic level, while ABC applies both on strategic and tactical level.
Of these methods ABC is the best known concept and that is not without
reason. ABC has in many ways revolutionized cost management and
can probably rightfully be called the greatest management innovation in the
20th century. |
| Environmental management. Here, my Ph.D. work has contributed
substantially according to Ray C. Anderson - the Co-Chairman of President
Clinton's Council on Sustainable Development - with a new environmental
impact indicator (the Waste Index) in addition to an integrated
environmental- and cost management method called Activity-Based
Cost and Environmental Management. This method is in many
ways an extension and further development of Activity-Based Management, and it
is the only method so far that can perform integrated environmental-
and cost assessments (Life-Cycle
Costing (LCC) and Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA))
according to modern management principles. When Activity-Based Cost
and Environmental Management models incorporate life-cycle perspectives they
are usually referred to as Activity-Based Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA)
models and when they focus on costs alone I refer to it as Activity-Based
Life-Cycle Costing. |
| Business analysis, forecasting,
uncertainty analysis
and Critical Assumption Planning (CAP). In
Activity-Based Cost and Environmental Management forecasting/simulation along with uncertainty analysis is
incorporated and can be employed in any situation ranging from simple business- and investment analyses to complex LCAs.
Essentially, it is a systematic approach towards turning hindsight into useful
foresight. Everybody jokes about the hindsight of cost accounting and many
other management tools - why not use to power of activity-based frameworks and
Monte Carlo methods and do something about it? |
| Risk management and Strategy are areas
that I have worked significantly with because they are so close to most of the
other areas mentioned above. Here, I apply various Strategic Risk
Management concepts as well as ABC and other approaches. |
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