Activity-based costing in smart and connected products production enterprises

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the adoption of an Activity-Based Costing (ABC) system to provide relevant cost information for enterprises in the business of building and selling Internet of Things (IoT) based products. The research is constructed over the relevant themes identified in previous research about ABC. An important issue that emerges from the analysis is that cost is a function of the volume of production and this notion of production does not represent the source of value generation discussed in this work. A functioning of a smart and connected product requires a cloud-based system for operating and monitoring it throughout its life. The implication of collecting and processing data is that costs essentially changes depending on the volume of data stored and the complexity of intended analytics that would require more qualified analysts. The estimation of costs related to data analytics and products’ monitoring serve as a reference to forecast future expending during the lifetime of products. This research is the first to provide a theoretical discussion on ABC assumptions in the context of IoT business models.