Activity Based Costing In today's competitive economy, the cost structure is much more complex than that of the past, and there is a lot less room for error than that allowed in the more laid back economy of the past. Today's costing concerns arise from the growing disparity between direct and indirect product costs. American manufacturers have been pursuing a steady stream of manufacturing methods and technologies. The goal was simple and uniform: to reduce or eliminate direct costs. But as manufacturing has evolved, so has the structure of a product's cost. Direct costs, such as labor, are no longer the dominant cost of a p