Managerial accounting
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Some areas that managerial accounting was involved internally in the Ford Motor Company are; product costing, product outsourcing, acquisition of tires, and voluntary recall. The effective use of managerial accounting in these areas may have averted the damage the company's reputation sustained during the Firestone Tire scandal.
The automotive industry is like every other business in the world and their main goal is making a profit. Once you have a product you must decide how much you are going to sell it for or if anyone would buy your product at the price that would allow you to make a profit. Therefore, product costing is a critical function. Managerial accounting assists the decision makers by giving them the real data as it pertains to those decisions that need to be made. When setting a price the first question is, "What was the cost to produce and deliver this item?" The current price that Ford sets on its vehicles is based in some way on that cost.
There are techniques in accounting to turn real losses into gains on paper. For example, increasing year end production without orders turns raw materials into inventory and inventory can be considered an asset thereby creating a gain with out selling anything...