Although each of the SDGs demands serious attention from academia around the world, Goal 12, which states “Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns”, presents a particular challenge to those who are engaged in the Cost Accounting fields. In this connection, the study on waste occurring during the course of a manufacturing process has been a relatively low-profile theme among the academics engaged in Cost Accounting, and arguably this reflected the view that there would not be much gained by focusing on waste. This view, however, needs to be modified in light of the global awareness of and commitments to the SDGs as said above. This is because, if we are unable to grasp the level of waste occurring during the manufacturing process with accuracy, the enterprise in question would not be equipped with the vital information of its ongoing costs (including waste) for making appropriate managerial decisions toward achieving the SDGs. Against this background, the writer has already questioned the validity of certain traditional assumptions made on waste and has presented an alternative method in a simplified model. In this article, which is a sequel to the above, the writer elaborates the examination of the validity of the assumption commonly adopted under the conventional method, i.e., that no waste occurs from the B-WIP, and introduces a more refined method, the K-Method, in place of the conventional method.
