ACCA APM September 2026: Kaizen Costing — Why "Evaluate the Impact" Isn't a List of Benefits

"Evaluate the impact" does not mean "tell me about Kaizen costing." It means tell me what changes. The September/December 2025 APM examiner watched a full cohort miss that on a 12-mark question, and the marks went with it.

What happened in Question 2

The scenario was Assynt, a car manufacturer in Ceeland trying to lift profitability. Part (a), worth 12 marks, asked candidates to evaluate the impact of introducing Kaizen costing on Assynt's performance management system, and to explain the problems of implementing it given that it would require quality circles.

The examining team's summary: performance was below what is normally expected for an APM Section B question. A significant minority did not appear to know what Kaizen costing was at all, and simply wrote about the general problems Assynt faced from political change in the country. Of the candidates who did know it, many never evaluated the impact on the performance management system — they explained the technique and stopped.

Then the detail that should sting. Very few candidates mentioned quality circles, despite quality circles being named in the requirement. That was not a throwaway clause: the scepticism professional skills marks in part (a) were awarded specifically for critically assessing the problems of creating quality circles. The examiner's note is blunt — many candidates could not be awarded the scepticism marks because they failed to discuss quality circles.

Part (b) failed the same way. Candidates were given six named benefits of robotic manufacturing and asked to assess the profit implications of those benefits. Many wrote instead about the problems of robotics — redundancy costs, capital outlay. Sensible commentary. Wrong question.

Wrong answer vs right answer

Wrong: "Kaizen costing is a Japanese continuous improvement technique which targets small incremental cost reductions during the manufacturing phase rather than at the design stage. It improves quality, engages employees and lowers unit costs, making Assynt more competitive against imports."

Accurate, well written, worth almost nothing. It is knowledge, it names no part of the performance management system, and it never says what will be different on Monday morning.

Right: "Assynt currently sets a standard cost at the start of the year and reports variances against it. Under Kaizen the target ratchets down every period, so the standard becomes a moving target and favourable variances get progressively harder to earn through the year. If Assynt's bonus scheme pays on favourable variances, staff will be demotivated as the target tightens, so the reward basis must shift from variance against standard to improvement delivered. Quality circles compound this: shop-floor staff must come off the line to meet, cutting available production hours and showing as an adverse efficiency variance in the short run — so the very people asked to find the savings are penalised by the current measurement system."

Same technical knowledge underneath. The difference is that the second answer names what moves.

What to do

1. Treat "impact" as a before-and-after. Two columns on your plan: how it works now, how it works after. Every mark lives in the gap. If a sentence would be equally true for a company that had never heard of the proposal, it is not scoring.

2. Count the clauses in the requirement and tick them off. Part (a) had two — the impact on the performance management system, and the problems given quality circles. Most candidates answered one and a half. The examiner told you where the scepticism marks were by naming quality circles in the requirement, and the majority never typed the phrase.

3. Run a fixed performance management checklist. Whatever change the examiner introduces — Kaizen, TQM, JIT, a new IT system — sweep the same list: standard costs, target setting, reward and bonus, motivation and behaviour, culture, leadership, and what the information system now has to collect. It works on any scenario and it stops you writing a textbook definition instead of an evaluation.

The numbers

APM passed 42% in June 2026 — third lowest across the whole qualification, behind only AAA at 39% and PM at 41%. The examiner's own verdict on Section B could not be clearer: APM is an application paper, and there are few, if any, marks available for demonstrating knowledge.

You didn't lose those marks because you didn't know Kaizen. You lost them because you only knew Kaizen.