Modular Data Base System: An Appraisal of its Usefulness in Physical Distribution Costing

The modular data base approach has been developed as an accounting device since 1972, when the American Accounting Association published the findings of the committee which it had set up “to prepare a report setting forth appropriate cost and revenue concepts and reporting techniques for planning, control and decision making in marketing, including physical distribution systems which may encompass the totality of production and marketing”. In that year two of the authors of the report, Mossman and Fischer, presented their initial findings to the James R. Riley Symposium on Business Logistics. Since then Mossman, Crissy and Fischer have further developed the concept, while Constantine and Lusch and Lambert and Armitage have concentrated on the implementation of the system, the latter being currently at the midpoint of a five year research project whose objective is the operationalisation of the concept.