Economic methods of optimizing production costs in the strategic management system of a nature-using enterprise

Abstract

The production costs of a nature-using enterprise consist of a manageable technical and economic part and mandatory natural-resource payments, whose growth rate is set by state regulation and is barely amenable to operational adjustment. The divergence of the manageability horizons of these components makes the direct transfer of industry cost-reduction tools insufficient and calls for embedding optimization methods into the strategic management loop. Using the model financial statements of an enterprise of the extractive and processing profile for 2022–2026, vertical and horizontal analysis of the cost structure, factor decomposition of the increase in total product cost by the chain-substitution method, ratio diagnostics and scenario modelling of the effect of a package of optimization methods were carried out. It was established that the share of natural-resource payments rose from 6.65 to 7.29% of total product cost, while the price and natural-resource factors together added more than 260 million roubles to the cost increase of 2025–2026, only partly offset by a decline in specific resource intensity. The cost intensity of output meanwhile rose from 0.907 to 0.929 roubles per rouble of revenue, and the return on sales fell to 7.1%. The scenario calculation shows that the coordinated application of target costing, kaizen costing and activity-based costing yields a discounted effect of about 340–640 million roubles over three years. The outstripping growth of the regulatory cost component shifts the centre of gravity of optimization from operational expense reduction to the strategic management of cost structure and product resource intensity.