Strategic cost management in milk production: a comparative study using differentiated production systems and technologies

The strategic cost management enables the development of strategies in order to generate competitive advantages. In rural activity, it allows to determine the production costs, margins and results, providing an opportunity to analyze the best production systems, being possible to evaluate the systems and technologies that leave the best results for the property. In this sense the study aims to analyze how the strategic management of costs can contribute to the maximization of results in dairy production, considering the use of production systems and differentiated technologies. The research is classified as applied, descriptive, qualitative, documental and multicase study, using for data collection observation, interview and document analysis. The results indicate that the compost barn production system reached the highest productivity per matrix, representing 31.89 liters/day, the highest average price per liter and the second lowest cost per liter, and therefore obtained the highest average profit per liter among the analyzed properties, which was R$ 0.27. It was also verified that the use of technologies improves the production and the results of the rural organizations studied, which denotes benefits greater than the implementation costs. These findings indicate that the strategic management of costs, as a managerial tool, enables the evaluation of the return of the activity from the respective production system, providing managers with information to make safer decisions and improve property management.