Control of operations through the application of standard costing and variance analysis

"Traditional management accounting is seen as a major tool of managerial control of operations. The idea is to assess how actual results deviate from targets during a given period. Standards are used to assess organisational performance as well as an individual's performance. Standards reflect desired or budgeted results during a particular period. In this chapter, we will discuss how different standard costs are used to compute a variance for inputs - materials, direct labour and manufacturing overheads."--p. 46.