Target costing supports the development of market-oriented and cost-effective products and contributes to the long-term viability of industrial companies. However, existing target costing approaches are largely limited to the development of simple products with few components. Claus Schulte-Henke examines how customer-oriented target costing can be implemented for all components of complex products and how suppliers can be integrated into the target costing process. He develops a multi-stage target costing concept based on a consistently illustrated practical example from the automotive industry, which enables the application of customer-oriented target costing for products of any complexity. Finally, the author defines three types of integration for automotive suppliers and presents possible approaches and behaviors within the framework of Z.