Manufacturing, Costs, Management accounting

Michael Porter identified the major cost drivers of a firm as economies of scale, location, learning, capacity utilization, linkages, interrelationships, integration, timing, discretionary policies, and institutional factors (Ch.3, pp. 62 дЫТ 118). When a firmдЫЄs operations are analyzed as detailed actions, scope for optimizing costs and building up efficiencies emerges. These possibilities are discussed below, excluding the more obvious ones like scale of operations, location or outsourcing.