Notes Essay

Owens & Minor is a distributor of surgical and medical supplies to hospitals and other health care facilities. Due to changing demand from customers, the company is facing increased operating costs, which has resulted in lower profit margins and even losses. In 1993, O&M recorded an $18 million profit, which was reduced to a loss of $11 million in 1995. The entire industry is experiencing similar difficulties. In an effort to resume profitability, O&M is evaluating alternatives to “cost-plus pricing”. Cost-plus pricing does not reflect the true cost of the services provided by O&M. Customers are demanding more of O&M while

Overhead costs need to be accounted for this way we can understand just how much cost goes into producing each unit. There are other cost factors that contribute to the product aside from labor and material. Since the projected and the actual sales volumes do not align Kelly should be concerned with the other

operating costs. This could most effectively be accomplished in two ways. First, through a reduction in flying

In regards to control, the owner of a sole proprietorship has the final say in any decisions. Due to the fact that there are no shareholders or other partners, the owner can make decisions regarding the direction of the company without having to answer to any other parties. If the owner wants to expand the company or move the business the owner has the ability to do so at any

* Since the capacity is being expanded to increase production of Product C, it could be assumed that this increase should be allocated to this product. Production of Product A is to be scaled down, but its level of fixed costs has been assumed to be unchanged.

“Auerbach Enterprises uses machine hours as the cost driver to assign overhead costs to the air conditioners. The company has used a company-wide predetermined overhead rate in past years, but the new controller, Bennie Leon, is considering the use of departmental overhead rates beginning with the next year. “(Schneider, 2012). One product is affected more than the other by use of departmental rates rather than companywide rate.

Alex comes up with the consensus that the “Goal” of his business and many others is to increase net profit while simultaneously increasing return on investment and their cash flow at the plant. This basically means to make money. These three measurements can be achieved by looking closer into his second set of measurements. Alex specifically must find a way to increase throughput while at the same time decreasing it inventory and operational expenses. All three of these measurements must be cautiously monitored since they all rely on each other to be obtained in balance. Factors that cause throughput, inventory, and operational expenses to become unbalanced are excess manpower and balance capacity of the demand of resources in the market.

* Least expensive of the three strategies due to the lack of excess inventory and employee overtime

e) Will Breezy be able to gain competitive advantage over local suppliers? Breezy could choose between cost leadership strategy or product differentiation strategy.

wrong cost determination for new services provided by DOP (to small charges for the “desktop” delivery, then the actual cost of it)

Rob’s goal is to keep margins consistent. As an example, he explained that if a customer wanted to upgrade from 10 seats to 30, an additional $200 in manufacturing costs would be added to

Jonah tells them that they have hidden capacity because some of their thinking is incorrect. Some ways to increase capacity at the bottlenecks are not to have any down time within the bottlenecks, make sure they are only working on quality products so not to waste time, and relieve the workload by farming some work out to vendors. Jonah wants to know how much it cost when the bottlenecks (X and heat treat) machines are down. Lou says $32 per hour for the X machine and $21 per hour for heat treat. How much when the whole

The next step would be for management to know precisely how their decision to downsize capacity would impact the firm’s future operating costs, and also identify specific areas in which the firm could achieve additional cost reductions. Additionally, the cost analysis would help forecast the firm’s operating costs and projected profits (or losses) for the upcoming fiscal year. However, before we can proceed with such analysis, an examination of how the various categories of Continental’s costs behave is in order.

However, this system was found to be “ineffective for costing and bidding individual parts.” Id. While some machines produced low cost parts at high volume, other machines were producing high cost parts at low volume, which created cost discrepancies between various machines and thus misallocation of

Secondly, a very important cost reduction which Regal Marine uses is the lack of stock or inventory, eliminating the costs and time associated to them. This can only possibly be achieved through partnering: producers provide on a regular basis directly to the production line, in the quantities needed, just in