WA 3 - Parasailing Margin Analysis

Rubatex Corporation manufactures rubber and foam for a variety of products, including artificial turf housing and insulation, hockey helmet liners, scuba diving suits, sports sandals and mouse pads. The company was purchased by an investment firm called American industrial partners (AIP) that has so far earned only a 1 percent return on its investment. Obviously the company is having problems. Its sales are up but earnings are down. In the first three months after acquisition, the company lost $2 million on $68 million in sales. Understandably, AIP wants to know why and is demanding aggressive action. Employees at the Bedford, Virginia, plant say they know something’s wrong. The plant is hot and dirty and crumbling, and they are working harder to produce items of poorer quality. Fewer than 7 of 10 orders are shipped on time, and 2% of sales are returned as defective. Built in 1924, the plant sprawls over 14 buildings, with only the offices and lunchroom air-conditioned. Equipment is…

Pat James, the purchasing agent for a local plant of the Oakden Electronics Division, was considering the possible purchase of a component from a new supplier. The component’s purchase price, $0.90, compared favorably with the standard price of $1.10. Given the quantity that would be purchased, Pat knew that the favorable price variance would help to offset an unfavorable variance for another component. By offsetting the unfavorable variance, his overall performance report would be impressive and good enough to help him qualify for the annual bonus. More importantly, a good performance rating this year would help him to secure a position at division headquarters at a significant salary increase. Purchase of the part, however, presented Pat with a dilemma. Consistent with his past behavior, Pat made inquiries regarding the reliability of the new supplier and the part’s quality. Reports were basically negative. The supplier had a reputation for making the first two or three deliveries on…

Pat James, the purchasing agent for a local plant of the Oakden Electronics Division, was considering the possible purchase of a component from a new supplier. The component’s purchase price, $0.90, compared favorably with the standard price of $1.10. Given the quantity that would be purchased, Pat knew that the favorable price variance would help to offset an unfavorable variance for another component. By offsetting the unfavorable variance, his overall performance report would be impressive and good enough to help him qualify for the annual bonus. More importantly, a good performance rating this year would help him to secure a position at division headquarters at a significant salary increase. Purchase of the part, however, presented Pat with a dilemma. Consistent with his past behavior, Pat made inquiries regarding the reliability of the new supplier and the part’s quality. Reports were basically negative. The supplier had a reputation for making the first two or three deliveries on…

Pat James, the purchasing agent for a local plant of the Oakden Electronics Division, was considering the possible purchase of a component from a new supplier. The component’s purchase price, $0.90, compared favorably with the standard price of $1.10. Given the quantity that would be purchased, Pat knew that the favorable price variance would help to offset an unfavorable variance for another component. By offsetting the unfavorable variance, his overall performance report would be impressive and good enough to help him qualify for the annual bonus. More importantly, a good performance rating this year would help him to secure a position at division headquarters at a significant salary increase. Purchase of the part, however, presented Pat with a dilemma. Consistent with his past behavior, Pat made inquiries regarding the reliability of the new supplier and the part’s quality. Reports were basically negative. The supplier had a reputation for making the first two or three deliveries on…

Telephone poles, once installed in a location, remain in useful service until one of a variety of events occur. (a) Name three reasons why a telephone pole might be removed from useful service at a particular location. (b) You are to estimate the total useful life of telephone poles. If the pole is removed from an original location while it is still serviceable, it will be installed elsewhere. Estimate the optimistic life, most likely life, and pessimistic life for telephone poles. What percentage of all telephone poles would you expect to have a total useful life greater than your estimated optimistic life? (c) What is an environmental life cycle assessment (LCA)? How do treated wood, metal, and concrete poles compare?

Papaya Partners is a distributor of papayas. They purchase papayas from individual growers and package them in 10-pound cartons for delivery to their various customers, generally supermarkets. Last month, they budgeted to sell $500,000 worth of cartons at a price of $25 each. Actual sales met a budget of $500,000 at $25 per carton. The management has received cost information based on actual performance and needs to understand the drivers of the overall variance from the budget. They have asked you, as an analyst in their management accounting department, to calculate and explain the variances. The following data has been provided: Budget Cost of fruit @ 10 pounds per carton $ 200,000 Cost of packaging @ 1 pound per carton $ 10,000 Labor costs @ .5 hourse per carton $ 90,000 Total Cost $ 300,000 Actual Cost of fruit @ 10 pounds per carton $ 244,200 Cost of packaging @ .55 pound percarton$ 11,000 Labor costs @ .75 hourse per carton $ 150,000 Total Cost $405,200 WHAT IS THE STANDARD COST…

CASE STUDY You are working as an inventory clerk in Shop Smart Centre. The company specializes in selling all types of gifts, ornaments, clothes and home design items. Due to high turnover of sales, the company orders items in bulk and keeps them in their storage until it is required by the sales department. Sometimes the staffs spend a lot of time looking for a particular item in the storage required by the customer which causes frustration and the customer eventually leaves the premises without even looking at the item. The owner of the business is really disappointed about this. Someone recently mentioned to him about having an ‘efficient warehouse system’. He was unsure what the key features of an efficient warehouse contained. He has come to know that you are doing a course in inventory management and has approached you for advice. Questions: Explain the key features of an efficient warehouse  Explain how the inventories should be placed so that it can be found easily by the…

Sun TV sells TV sets. It does not sell smart TVs so customers do not come to Sun TV if they want to purchase smart TVs. Sun TV wants to start selling smart TVs and will only sell smart TVs to customers to whom they advertise. Managers use customer information (income level, previous purchase history) to decide which customers they should target. The team needs to decide how sure it must be in predicting customer interest in a smart TV. If it is too cautious, it will choose a very high cutoff probability and only market to customers who it believes are very likely to be in the market for a smart TV. This may cause them to miss out on many customers. If they are too aggressive and choose a low cutoff probability, they may identify more individuals interested in buying smart TVs but also end up wasting marketing dollars on customers who are not interested in purchasing smart TVs. To choose a cutoff probability, the team develops the confusion matrices below for two cutoff probabilities on…

Case Study: Light House Insurance Company: Help Me Make It Through the Night                The Lighthouse Insurance Company was founded in 1970. It is engaged in selling nonlife policies specifically those related to fire and allied lines, motor car, marine, personal accident, bonds, and miscellaneous lines. The company is a stock corporation with 51 branches all over the Philippines from Northern Luzon to Southern Mindanao. It employs a total of 305 employees manning the head office in Makati City and all the branches.                The company’s Human Resource Department is composed of five employees including its head, Ms. Emerenciana Soriano. The department maintains a file of the company’s record of personnel. The branch managers are responsible for recruiting branch personnel who are trained at the head office from one week to one month. When the position of branch manager (BM) becomes vacant, the general manager pulls someone out from the Marketing Department to fill the…

Suzy's Temporary Employee (STE) business, located in a big city, can do an online criminal background check in-house for $1.95 per search with a fixed cost of $23,000. A third-party online security firm offered to do a similar security search for $9.00 per person with an annual service contract with STE. If STE's forecast is 2,900 searches next year, should STE continue to do the search in-house or accept the third- party offer? Use the Excel template Break-Even to determine the best decision. Round your answer for the breakeven quantity to the nearest whole number and round your answer for the amount of saving/loss to the nearest dollar. Breakeven quantity: Since the demand forecast of 2,900 searches is -Select-than the breakeven quantity, STE -Select- ✓outsource the work. STE -Select- $ by outsourcing. searches

Main Street Cinema invited three firms to bid on its daily janitorial services contract, and then scored those bids (also known as 'tenders') based on quality, reliability/risk and price (using a 100 point scale in each case). The results are listed here: Tender Offer from... Quality Score Reliability/ Risk Price Score Score Dawson Commercial 80 80 90 Cleaning Services Fulton Maintenance 90 70 100 and Facilities Service SteadyBrite Contract 85 85 85 Cleaning Assume that quality and price are equally important to Main Street Cinema. However, the issue of reliability/risk is twice as important to Main Street Cinema then either quality or price. Which janitorial service supplier does linear averaging suggest? O A. Dawson Commercial Cleaning Services and Dawson Commercial Cleaning Services O B. Dawson Commercial Cleaning Services C. Dawson Commercial Cleaning Services O D. SteadyBrite Contract Cleaning E. Fulton Maintenance and Facilities Service and SteadyBrite Contract Cleaning