The scientific management movement provides opportunities for the further development of cost accounting practice and technical methods. Engineers such as Frederick Taylor conducted job analysis and time and motion research, established scientific standards for the labor and materials required for specific unit output, and initiated the practice of allocating indirect manufacturing expenses to product costs. And formed the accounting management technical method with scientific management characteristics, which is mainly based on expense budget, standard cost method and difference analysis method. On the other hand, the concept and application of cost accounting have been deeply studied in academic circles. In particular, the cost account is put into the enterprise double-entry accounting system (Garcke & Fells,1887); The break-even chart is used to describe the change of cost with output; The practice of allocating all indirect manufacturing costs according to direct labor costs is questioned (Church,1908); In view of the nature of indirect manufacturing cost and its consideration in management decision-making, the concept of "different purposes, different costs" appears, which can avoid and inevitably form the cost concepts of indirect manufacturing cost, sunk cost, incremental or differential cost; The term "opportunity cost" was introduced from economics; By distinguishing the relevant periods of variable cost and fixed cost, we realize the possibility of time series and cross-sectional statistical analysis of cost behavior estimation and its advantages and disadvantages compared with judgment analysis, and emphasize that cost accounting information is independent of financial accounting system (Clark, 1923). Summarizing the development of cost accounting theory and practice in this period, we can further find that the cost accounting system at that time was independent from the capital accounting system and the financial accounting system, and its design and operation were the responsibility of the manufacturing department. The cost information provided by the manufacturing department is used by the manufacturing department to evaluate business efficiency, make pricing decisions, control and motivate workers' performance, rather than paying attention to the overall business success of the enterprise or preparing external financial reports.
Since 1980s, the manufacturing environment of enterprises has undergone fundamental changes. The production control system of enterprises began to adopt just-in-time scheduling, pursue zero defects and zero inventory, and began to adopt cooperative and flexible management strategies. On the other hand, with the wide application of computer control technology in enterprise manufacturing process, there is a trend of computer integrated manufacturing. In this new manufacturing environment, traditional management accounting techniques and methods are facing severe challenges, because they can't capture the company's progress in the process of developing into a world-class manufacturing industry, provide relatively accurate cost information, and consider the needs of strategic decision-making. The development of management accounting practice has recovered after decades of stagnation. In the new manufacturing environment, the technical method of enterprise management accounting is required to comprehensively consider many factors such as production, operation, market, policy, competitors and so on with the concept of system theory, and to implement comprehensive control and management of enterprise products, production, operation and market. Enterprises divide the whole business activities into a series of activities, introduce the concepts of cost activities and cost drivers, subvert the traditional understanding of cost behavior in a sense, divide costs according to workload and confirm them according to cost drivers, which indicates that the technical methods of management accounting are evolving in a more effective and pragmatic direction. Moreover, due to the rapid development of information technology in the computer age, all departments of enterprises are in constant information communication and share information base resources, which provides technical support for the application of new technical methods of management accounting. Therefore, it is more conducive to management accounting to make overall adjustments and strategies at any time according to changes in the environment. At this stage, the development focus of management accounting technology is to establish a new cost management control system and provide useful cost information with new ideas and technologies. In order to adapt to the concept of total quality management, enterprises adopt the quality cost system, and expect to reach the highest level of quality management with zero defects through the calculation, reporting and analysis of quality cost. Based on the concept of just-in-time system, enterprises in Japan, the United States and other countries have adopted improved cost method or reverse cost method; In line with the concept of activity-based management, enterprises adopt activity-based costing system, which is based on activity, and allocate the cost to the product burden through activity to provide more accurate product cost information; Based on the concept of strategic management, enterprises adopt strategic management accounting, and conduct strategic planning and management performance evaluation through product life cycle method, cost driver analysis method and value chain analysis method.