Product cost management structures: a review and neural network modelling

This paper reviews the growth of approaches in product costing and draws synergies with information management and resource planning systems, to investigate potential application of state of the art modelling techniques of neural networks. Increasing demands on costing systems to serve multiple decision-making objectives, have made it essential to use better techniques for analysis of available data. This need is highlighted in the paper. The approach of neural networks, which have several analogous facets to complement and aid the information demands of modern product costing, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) structures and the dominant-computing environment (for information management in the object oriented paradigm) form the domain for investigation. Simulated data is used in neural network applications across activities that consume resources and deliver products, to generate information for monitoring and control decisions. The results in application for feature extraction and variation detection and their implications are presented in the paper.