Tijuana Bronze Machining: Teaching Commentary

In using the ABC system, Valves and Pumps are matching the company’s target of 35% of gross margin apart from Flow Controllers. With the use of TAC, the gross margin on pump sales is 19.5% that well below the company's target gross margin of 35%. This indicates that the current overhead cost allocation practice did not reflect the real costs incurred on the products. The lower actual gross profit obtained was mainly due to wrong cost allocation on the pump product.

The week four individual paper addresses the implementation of Activity Based Costing (ABC) by Super Bakery, Inc., a virtual corporation founded by Franco Harris. Specifically, management strategies, the reasoning behind an ABC system, and the alternatives of a job order cost system or a process order cost system are assessed for this enterprise.

Develop and diagram an activity based cost model using the information in the case. Provide your best estimates about the cost and profitability of Wilkerson’s three product lines. What difference does your cost assignment have on reported product costs and profitability? What causes any shifts in cost and profitability?

Activity-based costing can be defined as the managers allocate costs depending on the quantity of resources a product or service consumed in the manufacture of goods and services. The activity based

The week four individual paper addresses the implementation of Activity Based Costing (ABC) by Super Bakery, Inc., a virtual corporation founded by Franco Harris. Specifically, management strategies, the reasoning behind an ABC system, and the alternatives of a job order cost system or a process order cost system are assessed for this enterprise.

Under an ABC system, the allocation of costs to products is achieved through at least four analytical steps. Firstly, costs are grouped into activity levels. Secondly, cost drivers are

Activity-based costing (ABC) methodology is an instrument designed to provide accountants and managers with valuable costing information that will allow them to make sound strategic decisions. It is used as a secondary methodology rather than a replacement for the company’s primarily costing system. The ABC methodology identifies activities in an organization and for each activity it assigns a cost. The cost reflects the actual resource consumption by each activity that has been identified.

As previously mentioned, the use of activity-based costing gives Kemps an advantage when competing for customers in an ever more competitive and growing market. However, the ability to succinctly distinguish how many small changes, when taken together, can have a large impact on cost savings (and therefore profit), is necessary in order to convince customers who may not be familiar with the many benefits of ABC. Mainly, management would want to demonstrate how the cost savings that they enjoy are ultimately passed on to their customers, perhaps by showing some of the improvements that have been made to their own company as a result of implementation, specifically focusing on advancements that would have a direct impact on the customer’s business.

In using ABC overhead costs are distributed differently across the three products, but in total they are the same, in total. However, ABC changes the information that managers receive to make effective business decisions, which will ultimately result in improved business results.

If we compare the old job costing method with the Activity based costing method we can see in the table below that the activity base rate gives us a much more accurate insight in allocating the manufacturing overhead costs. In fact, the activity based overhead calculation shows us that the activity rates for Valves and Pumps are lower than the rates used in plantwide production rates, but the activity based rate for Flow Controllers is around 50% higher than the cost calculated in the job costing method. The reason for this difference in our opinion can be traced back to the high receiving and production control costs as well as packaging &

3. Under the new activity-based costing (ABC) system, compute the indirect cost allocation rates for each of the three activities:

Q3. How were the limitations of the existing cost system overcome by the ABC Cost System? What are the implications of the ABC system?

The valves that the company makes are produced using four different machine components and are produced and shipped in large lots. Scott feels as if the competitors are now able to match their quality but have yet to try and gain market share by cutting the prices of their valves. Additionally, the pumps are made using five components from machines and then assembled into the final product. These are then shipping to the industrial companies that have purchased these pumps. One issue is that competitors keep lowering their prices on their own pumps, so Wilkerson has to match these and lower their prices as well. This makes it hard for Wilkerson to keep their gross margin profits up since their prices continue to lower. Last, the flow controllers need more labor and machining components than either the pumps or the valves. Additionally, there are many other alternatives that are used in the industry so more product runs are needed for these versus the pumps or valves. Also, more shipments are needed for these since there are shipped to industrial companies. The flow controllers were doing better than the valves or the pumps since Wilkerson was able to raise their

The method showed that the pricing that was being used for the three products were not correct. The price at which the pumps were being sold was low were high whereas flow controllers were low. Because of which the most profitable product was coming out to be flow controllers whereas it was actually the least profitable.

During the 1980s the limitations of traditional product costing systems began to be widely publicised. These systems were designed decades ago when most companies manufactured a narrow range of products, and direct labour and materials were the dominant factory costs. Overhead costs were relatively small, and the distortions arising from inappropriate overhead allocations were not significant. Information processing costs were high, and it was therefore difficult to justify more sophisticated overhead allocation methods.