What is in general the process, job description?
The complexities of product costing make it interesting.  On one side you will calculate the basic prices of everything Henkel makes or buys – So of course this means that you need to understand everything that goes into the things we make… the raw materials and packaging, as well as the costs related to the factory that made it.   Then on the other side you have to check to make sure that this is what it actually cost us. To do so, you have to really understand what is happening in Purchasing, in our Supply Chain, and of course in our production plants, so that we can identify where and why we have variances to our calculated prices.  When we find such cases we then have to decide if we have to change our prices.  Of course you don’t do this alone – you have to work in very close cooperation with your colleagues when making decisions like this – but you have a lot of responsibility!  If you don’t get this right then it creates big problems for the business.  Even though we are dealing with other countries all of our communication is in English.

This could be your typical day
As we work closely with colleagues in other Henkel departments, a typical day starts with a check of my emails, to see if there any urgent topics that need to be addressed. Then we look at SAP and check if there are any urgent Alert messages, and once we have dealt with those we can start creating master-data for new materials.  Of course, we are working in a really dynamic environment, so things change all the time and we have to adapt to that constantly.
What makes this job really challenging is that no two days are the same!

Why this work might be interesting for you?
Product-costing is an interesting and very challenging job, where you can learn a lot more than you could imagine.   Doing the basic calculation and analysis of product cost is one thing, but the real challenge lies in really understanding the business, the purchasing, production and of course in dealing with people from different countries and cultures.  This means there is a great opportunity to develop soft skills, and improve language skills.  And last but not least, you will be part of newly-emergent team which will become a global competence center.