McDermott Company has developed a new industrial component called IC-75. The company is excited about IC-75 because it offers superior performance relative to the comparable component sold by McDermott's primary competitor. The competing part sells for $1,200 and needs to be replaced after 2,000 hours of use. It also requires $200 of preventive maintenance during its useful life. The IC-75's performance capabilities are similar to its competing product with two important exceptions-it needs to be replaced after 4,000 hours of use and it requires $300 of preventive maintenance during its useful ife. Required: From a value-based pricing standpoint: 1. What is the reference value that McDermott should consider when pricing IC-75? 2. What is the differentiation value offered by IC-75 relative the competitor's offering for each 4,000 hours of usage? 3. What is IC-75's economic value to the customer over its 4,000-hour life? 4. What range of possible prices should McDermott consider when setting a price for IC-75? 1. Reference value 1,400

McDermott Company has developed a new industrial component called IC-75. The company is excited about IC-75 because it offers superior performance relative to the comparable component sold by McDermott's primary competitor. The competing part sells for $1,200 and needs to be replaced after 2,000 hours of use. It also requires $200 of preventive maintenance during its useful life. The IC-75's performance capabilities are similar to its competing product with two important exceptions-it needs to be replaced after 4,000 hours of use and it requires $300 of preventive maintenance during its useful ife. Required: From a value-based pricing standpoint: 1. What is the reference value that McDermott should consider when pricing IC-75? 2. What is the differentiation value offered by IC-75 relative the competitor's offering for each 4,000 hours of usage? 3. What is IC-75's economic value to the customer over its 4,000-hour life? 4. What range of possible prices should McDermott consider when setting a price for IC-75? 1. Reference value 1,400

Cornerstones of Cost Management (Cornerstones Series)

4th Edition

ISBN:9781305970663

Author:Don R. Hansen, Maryanne M. Mowen

Publisher:Don R. Hansen, Maryanne M. Mowen

Chapter11: Strategic Cost Management

Section: Chapter Questions

Problem 6E: Keith Golding has decided to purchase a personal computer. He has narrowed his choices to two: Brand...

See similar textbooks

Similar questions

Jonfran Company manufactures three different models of paper shredders including the waste container, which serves as the base. While the shredder heads are different for all three models, the waste container is the same. The number of waste containers that Jonfran will need during the following years is estimated as follows: The equipment used to manufacture the waste container must be replaced because it is broken and cannot be repaired. The new equipment would have a purchase price of 945,000 with terms of 2/10, n/30; the companys policy is to take all purchase discounts. The freight on the equipment would be 11,000, and installation costs would total 22,900. The equipment would be purchased in December 20x4 and placed into service on January 1, 20x5. It would have a five-year economic life and would be treated as three-year property under MACRS. This equipment is expected to have a salvage value of 12,000 at the end of its economic life in 20x9. The new equipment would be more efficient than the old equipment, resulting in a 25 percent reduction in both direct materials and variable overhead. The savings in direct materials would result in an additional one-time decrease in working capital requirements of 2,500, resulting from a reduction in direct material inventories. This working capital reduction would be recognized at the time of equipment acquisition. The old equipment is fully depreciated and is not included in the fixed overhead. The old equipment from the plant can be sold for a salvage amount of 1,500. Rather than replace the equipment, one of Jonfrans production managers has suggested that the waste containers be purchased. One supplier has quoted a price of 27 per container. This price is 8 less than Jonfrans current manufacturing cost, which is as follows: Jonfran uses a plantwide fixed overhead rate in its operations. If the waste containers are purchased outside, the salary and benefits of one supervisor, included in fixed overhead at 45,000, would be eliminated. There would be no other changes in the other cash and noncash items included in fixed overhead except depreciation on the new equipment. Jonfran is subject to a 40 percent tax rate. Management assumes that all cash flows occur at the end of the year and uses a 12 percent after-tax discount rate. Required: 1. Prepare a schedule of cash flows for the make alternative. Calculate the NPV of the make alternative. 2. Prepare a schedule of cash flows for the buy alternative. Calculate the NPV of the buy alternative. 3. Which should Jonfran domake or buy the containers? What qualitative factors should be considered? (CMA adapted)
Mallette Manufacturing, Inc., produces washing machines, dryers, and dishwashers. Because of increasing competition, Mallette is considering investing in an automated manufacturing system. Since competition is most keen for dishwashers, the production process for this line has been selected for initial evaluation. The automated system for the dishwasher line would replace an existing system (purchased one year ago for 6 million). Although the existing system will be fully depreciated in nine years, it is expected to last another 10 years. The automated system would also have a useful life of 10 years. The existing system is capable of producing 100,000 dishwashers per year. Sales and production data using the existing system are provided by the Accounting Department: All cash expenses with the exception of depreciation, which is 6 per unit. The existing equipment is being depreciated using straight-line with no salvage value considered. The automated system will cost 34 million to purchase, plus an estimated 20 million in software and implementation. (Assume that all investment outlays occur at the beginning of the first year.) If the automated equipment is purchased, the old equipment can be sold for 3 million. The automated system will require fewer parts for production and will produce with less waste. Because of this, the direct material cost per unit will be reduced by 25 percent. Automation will also require fewer support activities, and as a consequence, volume-related overhead will be reduced by 4 per unit and direct fixed overhead (other than depreciation) by 17 per unit. Direct labor is reduced by 60 percent. Assume, for simplicity, that the new investment will be depreciated on a pure straight-line basis for tax purposes with no salvage value. Ignore the half-life convention. The firms cost of capital is 12 percent, but management chooses to use 20 percent as the required rate of return for evaluation of investments. The combined federal and state tax rate is 40 percent. Required: 1. Compute the net present value for the old system and the automated system. Which system would the company choose? 2. Repeat the net present value analysis of Requirement 1, using 12 percent as the discount rate. 3. Upon seeing the projected sales for the old system, the marketing manager commented: Sales of 100,000 units per year cannot be maintained in the current competitive environment for more than one year unless we buy the automated system. The automated system will allow us to compete on the basis of quality and lead time. If we keep the old system, our sales will drop by 10,000 units per year. Repeat the net present value analysis, using this new information and a 12 percent discount rate. 4. An industrial engineer for Mallette noticed that salvage value for the automated equipment had not been included in the analysis. He estimated that the equipment could be sold for 4 million at the end of 10 years. He also estimated that the equipment of the old system would have no salvage value at the end of 10 years. Repeat the net present value analysis using this information, the information in Requirement 3, and a 12 percent discount rate. 5. Given the outcomes of the previous four requirements, comment on the importance of providing accurate inputs for assessing investments in automated manufacturing systems.
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?
ZZOOM, Inc., has decided to discontinue manufacturing its Z Best model. Currently, the company has 4,600 partially completed Z Best models on hand. The government has put a recall on a particular part in the Z Best model, so each base model must now be reworked to accommodate the style of the new part. The company has spent $110 per unit to manufacture these Z Best models to their current state. Reworking each Z Best model will cost $22 for materials and $25 for direct labor. In addition, $9 of variable overhead and $34 of allocated fixed overhead (relating primarily to depreciation of plant and equipment) will be allocated per unit. If ZZOOM completes the Z Best models, it can sell them for $180 per unit. On the other hand, another manufacturer is interested in purchasing the partially completed units for $105 each and converting them into Z Plus models. Prepare a differential analysis per unit to determine if ZZOOM should complete the Z Best models or sell them in their current state.
Keith Golding has decided to purchase a personal computer. He has narrowed his choices to two: Brand A and Brand B. Both brands have the same processing speed, hard disk capacity, RAM, graphics card memory, and basic software support package. Both come from companies with good reputations. The selling price for each is identical. After some review, Keith discovers that the cost of operating and maintaining Brand A over a three-year period is estimated to be 200. For Brand B, the operating and maintenance cost is 600. The sales agent for Brand A emphasized the lower operating and maintenance cost. She claimed that it was lower than any other PC brand. The sales agent for Brand B, however, emphasized the service reputation of the product. She provided Keith with a copy of an article appearing in a PC magazine that rated service performance of various PC brands. Brand B was rated number one. Based on all the information, Keith decided to buy Brand B. Required: 1. What is the total product purchased by Keith? 2. Is the Brand A company pursuing a cost leadership or differentiation strategy? The Brand B company? Explain. 3. When asked why he purchased Brand B, Keith replied, I think Brand B offered more value than Brand A. What are the possible sources of this greater value? If Keiths reaction represents the majority opinion, what suggestions could you offer to help improve the strategic position of Brand A?
Bienestar, Inc., has two plants that manufacture a line of wheelchairs. One is located in Kansas City, and the other in Tulsa. Each plant is set up as a profit center. During the past year, both plants sold their tilt wheelchair model for 1,620. Sales volume averages 20,000 units per year in each plant. Recently, the Kansas City plant reduced the price of the tilt model to 1,440. Discussion with the Kansas City manager revealed that the price reduction was possible because the plant had reduced its manufacturing and selling costs by reducing what was called non-value-added costs. The Kansas City manufacturing and selling costs for the tilt model were 1,260 per unit. The Kansas City manager offered to loan the Tulsa plant his cost accounting manager to help it achieve similar results. The Tulsa plant manager readily agreed, knowing that his plant must keep pacenot only with the Kansas City plant but also with competitors. A local competitor had also reduced its price on a similar model, and Tulsas marketing manager had indicated that the price must be matched or sales would drop dramatically. In fact, the marketing manager suggested that if the price were dropped to 1,404 by the end of the year, the plant could expand its share of the market by 20 percent. The plant manager agreed but insisted that the current profit per unit must be maintained. He also wants to know if the plant can at least match the 1,260 per-unit cost of the Kansas City plant and if the plant can achieve the cost reduction using the approach of the Kansas City plant. The plant controller and the Kansas City cost accounting manager have assembled the following data for the most recent year. The actual cost of inputs, their value-added (ideal) quantity levels, and the actual quantity levels are provided (for production of 20,000 units). Assume there is no difference between actual prices of activity units and standard prices. Required: 1. Calculate the target cost for expanding the Tulsa plants market share by 20 percent, assuming that the per-unit profitability is maintained as requested by the plant manager. 2. Calculate the non-value-added cost per unit. Assuming that non-value-added costs can be reduced to zero, can the Tulsa plant match the Kansas City per-unit cost? Can the target cost for expanding market share be achieved? What actions would you take if you were the plant manager? 3. Describe the role that benchmarking played in the effort of the Tulsa plant to protect and improve its competitive position.
Wright Plastic Products is a small company that specialized in the production of plastic dinner plates until several years ago. Although profits for the company had been good, they have been declining in recent years because of increased competition. Many competitors offer a full range of plastic products, and management felt that this created a competitive disadvantage. The output of the companys plants was exclusively devoted to plastic dinner plates. Three years ago, management made a decision to add additional product lines. They determined that existing idle capacity in each plant could easily be adapted to produce other plastic products. Each plant would produce one additional product line. For example, the Atlanta plant would add a line of plastic cups. Moreover, the variable cost of producing a package of cups (one dozen) was virtually identical to that of a package of plastic plates. (Variable costs referred to here are those that change in total as the units produced change. The costs include direct materials, direct labor, and unit-based variable overhead such as power and other machine costs.) Since the fixed expenses would not change, the new product was forecast to increase profits significantly (for the Atlanta plant). Two years after the addition of the new product line, the profits of the Atlanta plant (as well as other plants) had not improvedin fact, they had dropped. Upon investigation, the president of the company discovered that profits had not increased as expected because the so-called fixed cost pool had increased dramatically. The president interviewed the manager of each support department at the Atlanta plant. Typical responses from four of those managers are given next. Materials handling: The additional batches caused by the cups increased the demand for materials handling. We had to add one forklift and hire additional materials handling labor. Inspection: Inspecting cups is more complicated than plastic plates. We only inspect a sample drawn from every batch, but you need to understand that the number of batches has increased with this new product line. We had to hire more inspection labor. Purchasing: The new line increased the number of purchase orders. We had to use more resources to handle this increased volume. Accounting: There were more transactions to process than before. We had to increase our staff. Required: 1. Explain why the results of adding the new product line were not accurately projected. 2. Could this problem have been avoided with an activity-based cost management system? If so, would you recommend that the company adopt this type of system? Explain and discuss the differences between an activity-based cost management system and a traditional cost management system.
Hudson Corporation is considering three options for managing its data warehouse: continuing with its own staff, hiring an outside vendor to do the managing, or using a combination of its own staff and an outside vendor. The cost of the operation depends on future demand. The annual cost of each option (in thousands of dollars) depends on demand as follows: If the demand probabilities are 0.2, 0.5, and 0.3, which decision alternative will minimize the expected cost of the data warehouse? What is the expected annual cost associated with that recommendation? Construct a risk profile for the optimal decision in part (a). What is the probability of the cost exceeding $700,000?
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?
Trifecta Distributors has decided to discontinue manufacturing its X Plus model. Currently, the company has 4,600 partially completed X Plus models on hand. The government has put a recall on a particular part in the X Plus model, so each base model must now be reworked to accommodate the style of the new part. The company has spent $110 per unit to manufacture these X Plus models to their current state. Reworking each X Plus model will cost $20 for materials and $20 for direct labor. In addition, $7 of variable overhead and $32 of allocated fixed overhead (relating primarily to depreciation of plant and equipment) will be allocated per unit. Il Trifecta completes the X Plus models, it can sell them for $160 per unit. On the other hand, another manufacturer is interested in purchasing the partially completed units for $104 each and converting them into Z Plus models. Prepare a differential analysis per unit to determine if Trifecta should complete the X Plus models or sell them in their current state.
Alderon Enterprises is evaluating a special order it has received for a ceramic fixture to be used in aircraft engines. Alderon has recently been operating at less than full capacity, so the firm's management will accept the order if the price offered exceeds the costs that will be incurred in producing it. You have been asked for advice on how to determine the cost of two raw materials that would be required to produce the order. A) The special order will require 800 gallons of Endor, a highly perishable material that is purchased as needed. Alderon currently has 1,200 gallons of Endor on hand, since the material is used in virtually all of the company's products. The last time endor was purchased, Alderon paid $5.00 per gallon. However, the average price paid for the endor in stock was only $4.75. The market price for the Endor is quite volatile, with the current price at $5.50. If the special order is accepted, Alderon will have to place a new order next week to replace the…
MSI is considering outsourcing the production of the handheld control module used with some of its products. The company has received a bid from Monte Legend Company (MLC) to produce 10,000 units of the module per year for $16 each. The following information pertains to MSI’s production of the control modules: Direct materials $ 9 Direct labor 4 Variable manufacturing overhead 2 Fixed manufacturing overhead 3 Total cost per unit $ 18 MSI has determined it could eliminate all variable costs if the control modules were produced externally, but none of the fixed overhead is avoidable. At this time, MSI has no specific use in mind for the space that is currently dedicated to the control module production. Required: 1. Compute the difference in cost between making and buying the control module. 2. Should MSI buy the modules from MLC or continue to make them? 3-a. Suppose the MSI space currently used for the modules could be utilized by a new product line that would generate…