Nonfinancial measures of quality and time. For the past two years, Worldwide Cell Phones (WCP) has been working to improve the quality of its phones. Data for 2016 and 2017 follows (in thousands of phones): 2016 2,500 125 190 150 13 days 28 days 2017 Cell phones produced and shipped Number of defective units shipped Number of customer complaints Units reworked before shipping Manufacturing cycle time Average customer-response time 10,000 400 250 700 14 days 26 days

Nonfinancial measures of quality and time. For the past two years, Worldwide Cell Phones (WCP) has been working to improve the quality of its phones. Data for 2016 and 2017 follows (in thousands of phones): 2016 2,500 125 190 150 13 days 28 days 2017 Cell phones produced and shipped Number of defective units shipped Number of customer complaints Units reworked before shipping Manufacturing cycle time Average customer-response time 10,000 400 250 700 14 days 26 days

Cornerstones of Cost Management (Cornerstones Series)

4th Edition

ISBN:9781305970663

Author:Don R. Hansen, Maryanne M. Mowen

Publisher:Don R. Hansen, Maryanne M. Mowen

Chapter14: Quality And Environmental Cost Management

Section: Chapter Questions

Problem 17E

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Nonnancial measures of quality and time. For the past two years, Worldwide Cell Phones (WCP) has been working to improve the quality of its phones. Data for 2016 and 2017 follows (in thousands of phones):
DataSpan, Inc., automated its plant at the start of the current year and installed a flexiblemanufacturing system. The company is also evaluating its suppliers and moving toward LeanProduction. Many adjustment problems have been encountered, including problems relating toperformance measurement. After much study, the company has decided to use the performancemeasures below, and it has gathered data relating to these measures for the first four months ofoperations.Month1 2 3 4Throughput time (days) ? ? ? ?Delivery cycle time (days) ? ? ? ?Manufacturing cycle efficiency (MCE) ? ? ? ?Percentage of on-time deliveries 91% 86% 82% 78%Total sales (units) 3460 3312 3143 3025Management has asked for your help in computing throughput time, delivery cycle time, and MCE.The following average times have been logged over the last four months: Average per Month (in days)1 2 3 4Move time per unit 0.7 0.5 0.6 0.6Process time per unit 2.8 2.7 2.6 2.5Wait time per order before start of production 23.0…
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.
Nabors Company had actual quality costs for the year ended June 30, 20x5, as given below. At the zero-defect state, Nabors expects to spend 375,000 on quality engineering, 75,000 on vendor certification, and 50,000 on packaging inspection. Assume sales to be 25,000,000. Required: 1. Prepare a long-range performance report for 20x5. What does this report tell the management of Nabors? 2. Explain why quality costs still are present for the zero-defect state. 3. What if Nabors achieves the zero-defect state reflected in the report? What are some of the implications of this achievement?
Suppose that Kicker had the following sales and cost experience (in thousands of dollars) for May of the current year and for May of the prior year: In May of the prior year, Kicker started an intensive quality program designed to enable it to build original equipment manufacture (OEM) speaker systems for a major automobile company. The program was housed in research and development. In the beginning of the current year, Kickers accounting department exercised tighter control over sales commissions, ensuring that no dubious (e.g., double) payments were made. The increased sales in the current year required additional warehouse space that Kicker rented in town. (Round ratios to four decimal places. Round sales dollars computations to the nearest dollar.) Required: 1. Calculate the contribution margin ratio for May of both years. 2. Calculate the break-even point in sales dollars for both years. 3. Calculate the margin of safety in sales dollars for both years. 4. CONCEPTUAL CONNECTION Analyze the differences shown by your calculations in Requirements 1, 2, and 3.
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.
The Port Authority sells a wide variety of cables and adapters for electronic equipment online. Last year the mean value of orders placed with the Port Authority was 47.28, and management wants to assess whether the mean value of orders placed to date this year is the same as last year. The values of a sample of 49,896 orders placed this year are collected and recorded in the tile PortAuthority. a. Formulate hypotheses that can be used to test whether the mean value of orders placed this year differs from the mean value of orders placed last year. b. Use the data in the file PortAuthority to conduct your hypothesis test. What is the p value for your hypothesis test? At = 0.01, what is your conclusion?
In 2011, Milton Thayne, president of Carbondale Electronics, received a report indicating that quality costs were 31 percent of sales. Faced with increasing pressures from imported goods, Milton resolved to take measures to improve the overall quality of the companys products. After hiring a consultant in 20x0, the company began an aggressive program of total quality control. At the end of 20x5, Milton 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.
Rizzo Goal Inc. produces and sells hockey equipment, often custom made for online orders. The company has the following performance metrics on its balanced scorecard: days from ordered to delivered, number of shipping errors, customer retention rate, and market share. A measure map illustrates that the days from ordered to delivered and the number of shipping errors are both expected to directly affect the customer retention rate, which affects market share. Additional internal analysis finds that: Every shipping error over three shipping errors per month reduces the customer retention rate by 1.5%. On average, each day above three days from ordered to delivered yields a reduction in the customer retention rate of 1%. Each day before three days from order to delivery yields an increase in the customer retention rate of 1%, on average. Rizzo Goal Inc.s current customer retention rate is 60%. The company estimates that for every 1% increase or decrease in the customer retention rate, market share changes 0.5% in the same direction. Rizzo Goal Inc.s current market share is 21.4%. Ignoring any other factors, if the company has six shipping errors this month and an average of 3.5 days from ordered to delivered, determine (a) the new customer retention rate and (b) the new market share that Rizzo Goal Inc. expects to have.
The controller of Emery, Inc. has computed quality costs as a percentage of sales for the past 5 years (20X1 was the first year the company implemented a quality improvement program). This information is as follows: Required: 1. Prepare a trend graph for total quality costs. Comment on what the graph has to say about the success of the quality improvement program. 2. Prepare a graph that shows the trend for each quality cost category. What does the graph have to say about the success of the quality improvement program? Does this graph supply more insight than the total cost trend graph does? 3. Prepare a graph that compares the trend in relative control costs versus relative failure costs. Comment on the significance of this trend.
In 20x5, Major Company initiated a full-scale, quality improvement program. At the end of the year, Jack Aldredge, the president, noted with some satisfaction that the defects per unit of product had dropped significantly compared to the prior year. He was also pleased that relationships with suppliers had improved and defective materials had declined. The new quality training program was also well accepted by employees. Of most interest to the president, however, was the impact of the quality improvements on profitability. To help assess the dollar impact of the quality improvements, the actual sales and the actual quality costs for 20x4 and 20x5 are as follows by quality category: All prevention costs are fixed (by discretion). Assume all other quality costs are unit-level variable. Required: 1. Compute the relative distribution of quality costs for each year and prepare a pie chart. Do you believe that the company is moving in the right direction in terms of the balance among the quality cost categories? Explain. 2. Prepare a one-year trend performance report for 20x5 (compare the actual costs of 20x5 with those of 20x4, adjusted for differences in sales volume). How much have profits increased because of the quality improvements made by Major Company? 3. Estimate the additional improvement in profits if Major Company ultimately reduces its quality costs to 2.5 percent of sales revenues (assume sales of 10 million).
Mantenga Company provides routine maintenance services for heavy moving and transportation vehicles. Although the vehicles vary, the maintenance services provided follow a fairly standard pattern. Recently, a potential customer has approached the company, requesting a new maintenance service for a radically different type of vehicle. New servicing equipment and some new labor skills will be needed to provide the maintenance service. The customer is placing an initial order to service 150 vehicles and has indicated that if the service is satisfactory, several additional orders of the same size will be placed every 3 months over the next 3 to 5 years. Mantenga uses a standard costing system and wants to develop a set of standards for the new vehicle. The usage standards for direct materials such as oil, lubricants, and transmission fluids were easily established. The usage standard is 25 quarts per servicing, with a standard cost of 4 per quart. Management has also decided on standard rates for labor and overhead. The standard labor rate is 15 per direct labor hour, the standard variable overhead rate is 8 per direct labor hour, and the standard fixed overhead rate is 12 per direct labor hour. The only remaining decision is the standard for labor usage. To assist in developing this standard, the engineering department has estimated the following relationship between units serviced and average direct labor hours used: As the workers learn more about servicing the new vehicles, they become more efficient, and the average time needed to service one unit declines. Engineering estimates that all of the learning effects will be achieved by the time that 320 units are produced. No further improvement will be realized past this level. Required: 1. Assume that the average labor time is 0.768 hour per unit after the learning effects are achieved. Using this information, prepare a standard cost sheet that details the standard service cost per unit. (Note: Round costs to two decimal places.) 2. CONCEPTUAL CONNECTION Given the per-unit labor standard set, would you expect a favorable or an unfavorable labor efficiency? Explain. Calculate the labor efficiency variance for servicing the first 320 units. 3. CONCEPTUAL CONNECTION Assuming no further improvement in labor time per unit is possible past 320 units, explain why the cumulative average time per unit at 640 units is lower than the time at 320 units. Show that the standard labor time should be 0.768 hour per unit. Explain why this value is a good choice for the per-unit labor standard.