Cost Management Instruments: Cost-Target, Standard Cost and Kaizen Cost

In the competitive world of business, with the advancement of technology and the ever growing demanding consumers, business companies constantly search for new forms to handle their costs. Controlling should not only be restricted to stock-taking, but it has to adjust itself to the new market's requirements by supplying useful information for the managers' decision-taking. In this context new instruments come up for the management control. In this research, in only one study, we show a management technique of costs at the product's planning phase (target-cost), another utilized at the production phase (standard cost) and a continuous improvement system (Kaizen Cost). The objective is to expose the usefulness and the existing relations within the techniques. For that purpose, it has been opted to introduce the systems in the sequence in which they influence upon the determination and the occurrence of the products' costs. Therefore, first the target cost is being presented and then the standard cost. Finally, the Kaizen cost is analyzed. We concluded that these three tools, used together, help the company to reach the desired result through the possibility of its costs' management.