Key success factors. Dominic Consulting has issued a report recommending changes for its newest manufacturing client, Casper Engines. Casper Engines currently manufactures a single product, which is sold and distributed nationally. The report contains the following suggestions for enhancing business performance: Develop a hybrid engine to stay ahead of competitors Increase training hours of assembly-line personnel to decrease the currently high volumes of scrap and waste. Reduce lead times (time from customer order of product to customer receipt of product) by 20% in order to increase customer retention. Negotiate faster response times with direct material suppliers to allow for lower material inventory levels Benchmark the company’s gross margin percentages against its major competitors. Link each of these changes to the key success factors that are important to managers.
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Key success factors. Dominic Consulting has issued a report recommending changes for its newest manufacturing client, Casper Engines. Casper Engines currently manufactures a single product, which is sold and distributed nationally. The report contains the following suggestions for enhancing business performance:
Develop a hybrid engine to stay ahead of competitors
Increase training hours of assembly-line personnel to decrease the currently high volumes of scrap and waste.
Reduce lead times (time from customer order of product to customer receipt of product) by 20% in order to increase customer retention.
Negotiate faster response times with direct material suppliers to allow for lower material inventory levels
Benchmark the company’s gross margin percentages against its major competitors.
Link each of these changes to the key success factors that are important to managers.
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- Jolene Askew, manager of Feagan Company, has committed her company to a strategically sound cost reduction program. Emphasizing life-cycle cost management is a major part of this effort. Jolene is convinced that production costs can be reduced by paying more attention to the relationships between design and manufacturing. Design engineers need to know what causes manufacturing costs. She instructed her controller to develop a manufacturing cost formula for a newly proposed product. Marketing had already projected sales of 25,000 units for the new product. (The life cycle was estimated to be 18 months. The company expected to have 50 percent of the market and priced its product to achieve this goal.) The projected selling price was 20 per unit. The following cost formula was developed: Y=200,000+10X1 where X1=Machinehours(Theproductisexpectedtouseonemachinehourforeveryunitproduced.) Upon seeing the cost formula, Jolene quickly calculated the projected gross profit to be 50,000. This produced a gross profit of 2 per unit, well below the targeted gross profit of 4 per unit. Jolene then sent a memo to the Engineering Department, instructing them to search for a new design that would lower the costs of production by at least 50,000 so that the target profit could be met. Within two days, the Engineering Department proposed a new design that would reduce unit-variable cost from 10 per machine hour to 8 per machine hour (Design Z). The chief engineer, upon reviewing the design, questioned the validity of the controllers cost formula. He suggested a more careful assessment of the proposed designs effect on activities other than machining. Based on this suggestion, the following revised cost formula was developed. This cost formula reflected the cost relationships of the most recent design (Design Z). Y=140,000+8X1+5,000X2+2,000X3 where X1=MachinehoursX2=NumberofbatchesX3=Numberofengineeringchangeorders Based on scheduling and inventory considerations, the product would be produced in batches of 1,000; thus, 25 batches would be needed over the products life cycle. Furthermore, based on past experience, the product would likely generate about 20 engineering change orders. This new insight into the linkage of the product with its underlying activities led to a different design (Design W). This second design also lowered the unit-level cost by 2 per unit but decreased the number of design support requirements from 20 orders to 10 orders. Attention was also given to the setup activity, and the design engineer assigned to the product created a design that reduced setup time and lowered variable setup costs from 5,000 to 3,000 per setup. Furthermore, Design W also creates excess activity capacity for the setup activity, and resource spending for setup activity capacity can be decreased by 40,000, reducing the fixed cost component in the equation by this amount. Design W was recommended and accepted. As prototypes of the design were tested, an additional benefit emerged. Based on test results, the post-purchase costs dropped from an estimated 0.70 per unit sold to 0.40 per unit sold. Using this information, the Marketing Department revised the projected market share upward from 50 percent to 60 percent (with no price decrease). Required: 1. Calculate the expected gross profit per unit for Design Z using the controllers original cost formula. According to this outcome, does Design Z reach the targeted unit profit? Repeat, using the engineers revised cost formula. Explain why Design Z failed to meet the targeted profit. What does this say about the use of unit-based costing for life-cycle cost management? 2. Calculate the expected profit per unit using Design W. Comment on the value of activity information for life-cycle cost management. 3. The benefit of the post-purchase cost reduction of Design W was discovered in testing. What direct benefit did it create for Feagan Company (in dollars)? Reducing post-purchase costs was not a specific design objective. Should it have been? Are there any other design objectives that should have been considered?At the end of 20x1, Mejorar Company implemented a low-cost strategy to improve its competitive position. Its objective was to become the low-cost producer in its industry. A Balanced Scorecard was developed to guide the company toward this objective. To lower costs, Mejorar undertook a number of improvement activities such as JIT production, total quality management, and activity-based management. Now, after two years of operation, the president of Mejorar wants some assessment of the achievements. To help provide this assessment, the following information on one product has been gathered: Required: 1. Compute the following measures for 20x1 and 20x3: a. Actual velocity and cycle time b. Percentage of total revenue from new customers (assume one unit per customer) c. Percentage of very satisfied customers (assume each customer purchases one unit) d. Market share e. Percentage change in actual product cost (for 20x3 only) f. Percentage change in days of inventory (for 20x3 only) g. Defective units as a percentage of total units produced h. Total hours of training i. Suggestions per production worker j. Total revenue k. Number of new customers 2. For the measures listed in Requirement 1, list likely strategic objectives, classified according to the four Balance Scorecard perspectives. Assume there is one measure per objective.Boxer Production, Inc., is in the process of considering a flexible manufacturing system that will help the company react more swiftly to customer needs. The controller, Mick Morrell, estimated that the system will have a 10-year life and a required return of 10% with a net present value of negative $500,000. Nevertheless, he acknowledges that he did not quantify the potential sales increases that might result from this improvement on the issue of on-time delivery, because it was too difficult to quantify. If there is a general agreement that qualitative factors may offer an additional net cash flow of $150,000 per year, how should Boxer proceed with this Investment?
- Maxwell Company produces a variety of kitchen appliances, including cooking ranges and dishwashers. Over the past several years, competition has intensified. In order to maintainand perhaps increaseits market share, Maxwells management decided that the overall quality of its products had to be increased. Furthermore, costs needed to be reduced so that the selling prices of its products could be reduced. After some investigation, Maxwell concluded that many of its problems could be traced to the unreliability of the parts that were purchased from outside suppliers. Many of these components failed to work as intended, causing performance problems. Over the years, the company had increased its inspection activity of the final products. If a problem could be detected internally, then it was usually possible to rework the appliance so that the desired performance was achieved. Management also had increased its warranty coverage; warranty work had been increasing over the years. David Haight, president of Maxwell Company, called a meeting with his executive committee. Lee Linsenmeyer, chief engineer; Kit Applegate, controller; and Jeannie Mitchell, purchasing manager, were all in attendance. How to improve the companys competitive position was the meetings topic. The conversation of the meeting was recorded as seen on the following page: DAVID: We need to find a way to improve the quality of our products and at the same time reduce costs. Lee, you said that you have done some research in this area. Would you share your findings? LEE: As you know, a major source of our quality problems relates to the poor quality of the parts we acquire from the outside. We have a lot of different parts, and this adds to the complexity of the problem. What I thought would be helpful would be to redesign our products so that they can use as many interchangeable parts as possible. This will cut down the number of different parts, make it easier to inspect, and cheaper to repair when it comes to warranty work. My engineering staff has already come up with some new designs that will do this for us. JEANNIE: I like this idea. It will simplify the purchasing activity significantly. With fewer parts, I can envision some significant savings for my area. Lee has shown me the designs so I know exactly what parts would be needed. I also have a suggestion. We need to embark on a supplier evaluation program. We have too many suppliers. By reducing the number of different parts, we will need fewer suppliers. And we really dont need to use all the suppliers that produce the parts demanded by the new designs. We should pick suppliers that will work with us and provide the quality of parts that we need. I have done some preliminary research and have identified five suppliers that seem willing to work with us and assure us of the quality we need. Lee may need to send some of his engineers into their plants to make sure that they can do what they are claiming. DAVID: This sounds promising. Kit, can you look over the proposals and their estimates and give us some idea if this approach will save us any money? And if so, how much can we expect to save? KIT: Actually, I am ahead of the game here. Lee and Jeannie have both been in contact with me and have provided me with some estimates on how these actions would affect different activities. I have prepared a handout that includes an activity table revealing what I think are the key activities affected. I have also assembled some tentative information about activity costs. The table gives the current demand and the expected demand after the changes are implemented. With this information, we should be able to assess the expected cost savings. Additionally, the following activity cost data are provided: Purchasing parts: Variable activity cost: 30 per part number; 20 salaried clerks, each earning a 45,000 annual salary. Each clerk is capable of processing orders associated with 100 part numbers. Inspecting parts: Twenty-five inspectors, each earning a salary of 40,000 per year. Each inspector is capable of 2,000 hours of inspection. Reworking products: Variable activity cost: 25 per unit reworked (labor and parts). Warranty: Twenty repair agents, each paid a salary of 35,000 per year. Each repair agent is capable of repairing 500 units per year. Variable activity costs: 15 per product repaired. Required: 1. Compute the total savings possible as reflected by Kits handout. Assume that resource spending is reduced where possible. 2. Explain how redesign and supplier evaluation are linked to the savings computed in Requirement 1. Discuss the importance of recognizing and exploiting internal and external linkages. 3. Identify the organizational and operational activities involved in the strategy being considered by Maxwell Company. What is the relationship between organizational and operational activities?Lindell Manufacturing embarked on an ambitious quality program that is centered on continual improvement. This improvement is operationalized by declining quality costs from year to year. Lindell rewards plant managers, production supervisors, and workers with bonuses ranging from 1,000 to 10,000 if their factory meets its annual quality cost goals. Len Smith, manager of Lindells Boise plant, felt obligated to do everything he could to provide this increase to his employees. Accordingly, he has decided to take the following actions during the last quarter of the year to meet the plants budgeted quality cost targets: a. Decrease inspections of the process and final product by 50% and transfer inspectors temporarily to quality training programs. Len believes this move will increase the inspectors awareness of the importance of quality; also, decreasing inspection will produce significantly less downtime and less rework. By increasing the output and decreasing the costs of internal failure, the plant can meet the budgeted reductions for internal failure costs. Also, by showing an increase in the costs of quality training, the budgeted level for prevention costs can be met. b. Delay replacing and repairing defective products until the beginning of the following year. While this may increase customer dissatisfaction somewhat, Len believes that most customers expect some inconvenience. Besides, the policy of promptly dealing with customers who are dissatisfied could be reinstated in 3 months. In the meantime, the action would significantly reduce the costs of external failure, allowing the plant to meet its budgeted target. c. Cancel scheduled worker visits to customers plants. This program, which has been very well received by customers, enables Lindell workers to see just how the machinery they make is used by the customer and also gives them first-hand information on any remaining problems with the machinery. Workers who went on previous customer site visits came back enthusiastic and committed to Lindells quality program. Lindells quality program staff believes that these visits will reduce defects during the following year. Required: 1. Evaluate Lens ethical behavior. In this evaluation, consider his concern for his employees. Was he justified in taking the actions described? If not, what should he have done? 2. Assume that the company views Lens behavior as undesirable. What can the company do to discourage it? 3. Assume that Len is a CMA and a member of the IMA. Refer to the ethical code for management accountants in Chapter 1. Were any of these ethical standards violated?Nico Parts, Inc., produces electronic products with short life cycles (of less than two years). Development has to be rapid, and the profitability of the products is tied strongly to the ability to find designs that will keep production and logistics costs low. Recently, management has also decided that post-purchase costs are important in design decisions. Last month, a proposal for a new product was presented to management. The total market was projected at 200,000 units (for the two-year period). The proposed selling price was 130 per unit. At this price, market share was expected to be 25 percent. The manufacturing and logistics costs were estimated to be 120 per unit. Upon reviewing the projected figures, Brian Metcalf, president of Nico, called in his chief design engineer, Mark Williams, and his marketing manager, Cathy McCourt. The following conversation was recorded: BRIAN: Mark, as you know, we agreed that a profit of 15 per unit is needed for this new product. Also, as I look at the projected market share, 25 percent isnt acceptable. Total profits need to be increased. Cathy, what suggestions do you have? CATHY: Simple. Decrease the selling price to 125 and we expand our market share to 35 percent. To increase total profits, however, we need some cost reductions as well. BRIAN: Youre right. However, keep in mind that I do not want to earn a profit that is less than 15 per unit. MARK: Does that 15 per unit factor in preproduction costs? You know we have already spent 100,000 on developing this product. To lower costs will require more expenditure on development. BRIAN: Good point. No, the projected cost of 120 does not include the 100,000 we have already spent. I do want a design that will provide a 15-per-unit profit, including consideration of preproduction costs. CATHY: I might mention that post-purchase costs are important as well. The current design will impose about 10 per unit for using, maintaining, and disposing our product. Thats about the same as our competitors. If we can reduce that cost to about 5 per unit by designing a better product, we could probably capture about 50 percent of the market. I have just completed a marketing survey at Marks request and have found out that the current design has two features not valued by potential customers. These two features have a projected cost of 6 per unit. However, the price consumers are willing to pay for the product is the same with or without the features. Required: 1. Calculate the target cost associated with the initial 25 percent market share. Does the initial design meet this target? Now calculate the total life-cycle profit that the current (initial) design offers (including preproduction costs). 2. Assume that the two features that are apparently not valued by consumers will be eliminated. Also assume that the selling price is lowered to 125. a. Calculate the target cost for the 125 price and 35 percent market share. b. How much more cost reduction is needed? c. What are the total life-cycle profits now projected for the new product? d. Describe the three general approaches that Nico can take to reduce the projected cost to this new target. Of the three approaches, which is likely to produce the most reduction? 3. Suppose that the Engineering Department has two new designs: Design A and Design B. Both designs eliminate the two nonvalued features. Both designs also reduce production and logistics costs by an additional 8 per unit. Design A, however, leaves post-purchase costs at 10 per unit, while Design B reduces post-purchase costs to 4 per unit. Developing and testing Design A costs an additional 150,000, while Design B costs an additional 300,000. Assuming a price of 125, calculate the total life-cycle profits under each design. Which would you choose? Explain. What if the design you chose cost an additional 500,000 instead of 150,000 or 300,000? Would this have changed your decision? 4. Refer to Requirement 3. For every extra dollar spent on preproduction activities, how much benefit was generated? What does this say about the importance of knowing the linkages between preproduction activities and later activities?
- Recently, Ulrich Company received a report from an external consulting group on its quality costs. The consultants reported that the companys quality costs total about 21 percent of its sales revenues. Somewhat shocked by the magnitude of the costs, Rob Rustin, president of Ulrich Company, decided to launch a major quality improvement program. For the coming year, management decided to reduce quality costs to 17 percent of sales revenues. Although the amount of reduction was ambitious, most company officials believed that the goal could be realized. To improve the monitoring of the quality improvement program, Rob directed Pamela Golding, the controller, to prepare monthly performance reports comparing budgeted and actual quality costs. Budgeted costs and sales for the first two months of the year are as follows: The following actual sales and actual quality costs were reported for January: Required: 1. Reorganize the monthly budgets so that quality costs are grouped in one of four categories: appraisal, prevention, internal failure, or external failure. (Essentially, prepare a budgeted cost of quality report.) Also, identify each cost as variable (V) or fixed (F). (Assume that no costs are mixed.) 2. Prepare a performance report for January that compares actual costs with budgeted costs. Comment on the companys progress in improving quality and reducing its quality costs.In 20X1, Don Blackburn, president of Price Electronics, received a report indicating that quality costs were 31% of sales. Faced with increasing pressures from imported goods. Don resolved to take measures to improve the overall quality of the companys products. After hiring a consultant in 20X1, the company began an aggressive program of total quality control. At the end of 20X5, Don requested an analysis of the progress the company had made in reducing and controlling quality costs. The accounting department assembled the following data: Required: 1. Compute the quality costs as a percentage of sales by category and in total for each year. 2. Prepare a multiple-year trend graph for quality costs, both by total costs and by category. Using the graph, assess the progress made in reducing and controlling quality costs. Does the graph provide evidence that quality has improved? Explain. 3. Using the 20X1 quality cost relationships (assume all costs are variable), calculate the quality costs that would have prevailed in 20X4. By how much did profits increase in 20X4 because of the quality improvement program? Repeat for 20X5.Bannister Company, an electronics firm, buys circuit boards and manually inserts various electronic devices into the printed circuit board. Bannister sells its products to original equipment manufacturers. Profits for the last two years have been less than expected. Mandy Confer, owner of Bannister, was convinced that her firm needed to adopt a revenue growth and cost reduction strategy to increase overall profits. After a careful review of her firms condition, Mandy realized that the main obstacle for increasing revenues and reducing costs was the high defect rate of her products (a 6 percent reject rate). She was certain that revenues would grow if the defect rate was reduced dramatically. Costs would also decline as there would be fewer rejects and less rework. By decreasing the defect rate, customer satisfaction would increase, causing, in turn, an increase in market share. Mandy also felt that the following actions were needed to help ensure the success of the revenue growth and cost reduction strategy: a. Improve the soldering capabilities by sending employees to an outside course. b. Redesign the insertion process to eliminate some of the common mistakes. c. Improve the procurement process by selecting suppliers that provide higher-quality circuit boards. Required: 1. State the revenue growth and cost reduction strategy using a series of cause-and-effect relationships expressed as if-then statements. 2. Illustrate the strategy using a strategy map. 3. Explain how the revenue growth strategy can be tested. In your explanation, discuss the role of lead and lag measures, targets, and double-loop feedback.
- Kagle design engineers are in the process of developing a new green product, one that will significantly reduce impact on the environment and yet still provide the desired customer functionality. Currently, two designs are being considered. The manager of Kagle has told the engineers that the cost for the new product cannot exceed 550 per unit (target cost). In the past, the Cost Accounting Department has given estimated costs using a unit-based system. At the request of the Engineering Department, Cost Accounting is providing both unit-and activity-based accounting information (made possible by a recent pilot study producing the activity-based data). Unit-based system: Variable conversion activity rate: 100 per direct labor hour Material usage rate: 20 per part ABC system: Labor usage: 15 per direct labor hour Material usage (direct materials): 20 per part Machining: 75 per machine hour Purchasing activity: 150 per purchase order Setup activity: 3,000 per setup hour Warranty activity: 500 per returned unit (usually requires extensive rework) Customer repair cost: 25 per repair hour (average) Required: 1. Select the lower-cost design using unit-based costing. Are logistical and post-purchase activities considered in this analysis? 2. Select the lower-cost design using ABC analysis. Explain why the analysis differs from the unit-based analysis. 3. What if the post-purchase cost was an environmental contaminant and amounted to 10 per unit for Design A and 40 per unit for Design B? Assume that the environmental cost is borne by society. Now which is the better design?Javier Company has sales of 8 million and quality costs of 1,600,000. The company is embarking on a major quality improvement program. During the next three years, Javier intends to attack failure costs by increasing its appraisal and prevention costs. The right prevention activities will be selected, and appraisal costs will be reduced according to the results achieved. For the coming year, management is considering six specific activities: quality training, process control, product inspection, supplier evaluation, prototype testing, and redesign of two major products. To encourage managers to focus on reducing non-value-added quality costs and select the right activities, a bonus pool is established relating to reduction of quality costs. The bonus pool is equal to 10 percent of the total reduction in quality costs. Current quality costs and the costs of these six activities are given in the following table. Each activity is added sequentially so that its effect on the cost categories can be assessed. For example, after quality training is added, the control costs increase to 320,000, and the failure costs drop to 1,040,000. Even though the activities are presented sequentially, they are totally independent of each other. Thus, only beneficial activities need be selected. Required: 1. Identify the control activities that should be implemented, and calculate the total quality costs associated with this selection. Assume that an activity is selected only if it increases the bonus pool. 2. Given the activities selected in Requirement 1, calculate the following: a. The reduction in total quality costs b. The percentage distribution for control and failure costs c. The amount for this years bonus pool 3. Suppose that a quality engineer complained about the gainsharing incentive system. Basically, he argued that the bonus should be based only on reductions of failure and appraisal costs. In this way, investment in prevention activities would be encouraged, and eventually, failure and appraisal costs would be eliminated. After eliminating the non-value-added costs, focus could then be placed on the level of prevention costs. If this approach were adopted, what activities would be selected? Do you agree or disagree with this approach? Explain.Lonnies Shipping Co. is considering switching to an all-electric fleet to minimize emissions. Lonnie wants to gradually implement this change over the next 10 years. The company currently has a fleet of 100 trucks, half of which are electric-powered. Upon consulting with Lonnie, you have determined that an appropriate course of action is to include this CSR activity as a strategic objective in the companys current balanced scorecard. a. Under which performance perspective should the CSR strategic objective be placed? b. Suggest one possible performance metric for the CSR strategic objective. c. Determine an appropriate yearly performance target for the performance metric you suggested in part (b).
