From Departments to Activities

In ABC, cost accounting shifts from the chart of accounts set up around departments to activities within those departments. Each supply chain company in our three-company example has multiple products. Each product requires at least one activity in each company. 

Departments, in turn, have budgets to operate the activity or activities under their purview. Any project proposed to improve the function of that department will likely be a departmental effort, using our framework for improvement project categories. It will benefit, to some extent, all the products that pass through the department. The project will also likely be justified on savings achieved within that department there will be little thought addressing the impact on the products. Acme s Project A from Section 26.2.2 is an example. 

There are a number of traps in this process, a few of which we have already mentioned. Because Old Line has a plant-wide overhead rate, each department absorbs overhead based on the direct labor incurred in its department. The problem arises when overhead items are unevenly distributed among the departments. It so happens that Activity 5 is a heat-treat operation supported by a large investment in equipment. Activity 5 also consumes large amounts of energy. In Old Line s case, depreciation on the equipment, interest on debt taken on to finance the equipment, and the energy costs are all overhead items. Old Line allocates them over 

Activity 6 is labor intensive, and it has the largest share of direct labor at Old Line. Because direct labor is the base for allocation under conventional accounting. Activity 6 appears to be the costliest (28 percent) using a conventional accounting approach. By contrast, the ABC approach shows that Activity 5 actually has the highest cost (23 percent). 

Companies, particularly public ones, are naturally aware of and concerned about their in perception in capital markets. These markets provide the money that put them in business, entrusting investor resources to the hands of management. There is an increasing perception that conventional accounting shortchanges many investors because of its influence on company decision-makers. 

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In ABC, cost accounting shifts from the chart of accounts set up aroimd departments to activities within those departments. The supply chain diagram in Figure 25.2 applies this idea in our three-company supply chain. Each supply chain company has multiple products. Each "stacked" box depicts a separate product line. Shaped symbols (oval for Process, diamond for Old Line, and triangle for High Tech) represent activities in the process. Each product requires at least one activity in each company... 

HMIP publish sets of Guidance Notes, which relate to activities they control. These notes are known as Best Practicable Means (BPM) Notes. BPM is explained in Note BPM 1/88, Best Practicable Means. General Principles and Practices. Copies of these notes may be obtained from the Department of the Environment Publications Sales Unit, Building 1, Victoria Road, South Ruislip, Middlesex HA4 ONZ, telephone 020 8841 3425. 

The zinc will be inclined to depart spontaneously from the high-activity amalgam to that with a corresponding low activity. For example, if c1 is greater than c2, E is positive and the reaction advances in the direction specified. It may be added that metals in mercury constitute fairly ideal solutions, and that the emfs are almost correctly calculated by using concentrations instead of activities. 

Hamer, W. J. "Theoretical Mean Activity Coefficients of Strong Electrolytes in Aqueous Solution from 0 to 100 C" NSRDS-NBS 24, U.S. Department of Commerce, National Bureau of Standards, December 1968. 

In order to establish the antiviral activity. Herpes simplex vims (HSV) and Parainfluenza- ) vims (PI-3) were used. The test virases were obtained from Department of Virology, Faculty of Veterinaiy, Ankara University (Turkey). 

I was not really unhappy about being suddenly transported from department chief to something approaching non-personhood. It was a form of freedom. I could come and go as I pleased, and in fact accomplished more outside the laboratory area than I did within it. I found intellectual stimulation in classes and the library, hr the lab, conversation seemed to be the main activity. 

Within firms, the hybrid or matrix concept has become increasingly fashionable in pharmaceutical companies. Project teams are created that comprise membership from departments with specific technical, organizational, and management expertise. Such teams form and dissolve as the need arises. In principle, advantages of the matrix structure include cross-disciplinary enrichment of the team s activities and crossfertilization of expertise. Disadvantages of the matrix system include a relative lack of professional development for specific technical expertise for each team member, the potential for cross-departmental rivalry, and competition for each team member s time based on the needs of the interdisciplinary project versus those of his/her technical "home" department (Verona and Ravasi 2003). These multi-functional teams have the potential to increase bureaucracy and delay innovation. At least on a small scale, it may be better to solve a problem with two people rather than with ten. 

Figure 54 Renal images obtained using 99raTc-DTPA showing a normal right kidney and impaired function of the left kidney. The 4 "Tc activity can be seen to accumulate in the bladder at the bottom centre with increasing elapsed time from (a) to (c). (Courtesy of the Nuclear Medicine Department, Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Birmingham, UK)...

A STATE PRACTICE ACT/BOARD OF PHARMACY PROVISION Trudy Hamilton, Pharm.D., is a licensed pharmacist and is currently the manager of a hospital pharmacy department. In the state where Dr. Hamilton is licensed, nonpharmacist personnel are prohibited by both statute (the state pharmacy practice act) and state board of pharmacy regulation from engaging in activities defined as the practice of pharmacy. The specific activities that fall within the definition of the practice of pharmacy are limited to being personally performed by licensed pharmacists only. Such activities include counseling patients about their medications and responding to drug information requests from other health care professionals (e.g., physicians and nurses). 

The three terms in these equations reading from left to right are related to 7, a , and to of Eq. 2.13, respectively. The activity coefficient and the osmotic coefficient measure the degree to which solute concentrations and the activity of water (aw) depart from ideal solutions, respectively. For ideal solutions, a = to and 7 = 1.0 (Eq. 2.13) or Gex = 0 (Eq. 2.32). Similarly, aw = 1.0 for an ideal solution. In the real world, solutions are rarely ideal, except in the infinitely dilute case we therefore need a model for calculating and (f>[= f(aw)]. An early model based on statistical mechanics was developed by Debye and Hiickel (1923). Their equations are... 

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