Implementing CAM-I’s Closed Loop Planning and Budgeting Methodology

Effective Planning and Budgeting continues to be one of the biggest challenges facing today’s organizations. The Consortium for Advanced Management-International (CAM-I) tackled this issue and developed and published the Closed Loop Methodology as a powerful approach to improving the operational planning and budgeting processes in most organizations.

• Who is the book for?
  • All strategic, operational, and financial managers responsible for planning and budgeting

• What is the value to your organization of reading this book?
  • Obtain a clear appreciation of the Closed Loop for effective planning & budgeting in today’s business
  • Understand how balancing resource capacity is used as an integral component in the models developed using this approach
  • Recognize how operational efficiency information can impact costs/profitability and budgets
  • Appreciate the benefits of “scenario playing” for improving business operations, reducing costs, and developing more realistic budgets
  • Learn how the methodology integrates with the organization’s performance management system.
  • Discover how to make planning and budgeting critical value-added processes in your organization

Since the initial publication of the book, many organizations have implemented the Closed Loop Methodology. The main benefits that have been obtained are the development of models providing more relevant resource planning and costing/profitability information to support process improvement and strategic decision making. The primary value achieved is that more effort can be focused on the resource planning process so that cost drivers can be better understood, and budgets can be developed on a more automated and less time-consuming basis.

This book provides practical insights on how to use target costing for profit planning and cost management.

This book provides practical insights on how to use target costing for profit planning and cost management. The purpose is to show that target costing is a management method that allows firms to provide customers with products that they want, when they want them, at a price they can afford, and still earn adequate financial returns.

The book extends the existing knowledge base by focusing on the details of how target costing works in practice. The authors relied on state-of-the-art practices drawn from translations of papers available only in the Japanese language and the collective experience of several world class companies: Arthur Andersen LLP, The Boeing Company, Chrysler Corporation, Eastman Kodak Company and Texas Instruments.

Materials in this book are not currently available in the English language business literature. Practicing managers will find that this document contains a balance between general concepts and technical information required for their application. Examples from industry are used to illustrate important issues and current practice.

Key topics in the book include:

1. How target costing relates to business strategy and profit planning
2. A process model that links target costing with the product development cycle
3. The linkages between customer requirements and costing
4. Tools, information and measurement systems required to support target costing