The manager of the Cosmetics Division, has had a return on investment of 14% for his division for the past three years. Sanders has the opportunity to invest in a new line of cosmetics which is expected to have a return on investment of 12%. The company's minimum required rate of return is 8%. If managerial performance is evaluated using return on investment (ROI), he will: Reject the opportunity Accept the Opportunity

The manager of the Cosmetics Division, has had a return on investment of 14% for his division for the past three years. Sanders has the opportunity to invest in a new line of cosmetics which is expected to have a return on investment of 12%. The company's minimum required rate of return is 8%. If managerial performance is evaluated using return on investment (ROI), he will: Reject the opportunity Accept the Opportunity

Essentials of Business Analytics (MindTap Course List)

2nd Edition

ISBN:9781305627734

Author:Jeffrey D. Camm, James J. Cochran, Michael J. Fry, Jeffrey W. Ohlmann, David R. Anderson

Publisher:Jeffrey D. Camm, James J. Cochran, Michael J. Fry, Jeffrey W. Ohlmann, David R. Anderson

Chapter8: Time Series Analysis And_forecasting

Section: Chapter Questions

Problem 21P: The president of a small manufacturing firm is concerned about the continual increase in...

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Each of the following scenarios requires the use of accounting information to carry out one or more of the following managerial activities: (1) planning, (2) control and evaluation, (3) continuous improvement, or (4) decision making. a. MANAGER: At the last board meeting, we established an objective of earning an after-tax profit equal to 20 percent of sales. I need to know the revenue that we need to earn in order to meet this objective, given that we have 250,000 to spend on the promotional campaign. Once I have estimated sales in units, we then need to outline a promotional campaign that conforms to our budget and that will take us where we want to be. However, to compute the targeted sales revenue, I need to know the unit sales price, the unit variable cost, and the associated fixed production and support costs. I also need to know the tax rate. b. MANAGER: We have problems with our procurement process. Our accounts payable department is spending 80 percent of its time resolving discrepancies between the purchase order, receiving order, and suppliers invoice. Incorrect part numbers on the purchase orders, incorrect quantities ordered, and wrong parts sent (or the incorrect quantity) are just a few examples of sources of discrepancies. A complete redesign of the process has been suggested, which will allow us to eliminate virtually all of the errors and, at the same time, significantly reduce the number of clerks needed in purchasing, receiving, and accounts payable. This redesign promises to significantly reduce costs, decrease lead time, and increase customer satisfaction. c. MANAGER: This overhead cost report indicates that we have spent significantly more on inspection, purchasing, and production than was budgeted. An investigation has revealed that the source of the problem is faulty components from suppliers. A supplier evaluation has revealed that by selecting five suppliers with the best quality records (out of 15 currently used), the number of defective components will be dramatically reduced, thus producing significant overhead savings by reducing the demand for inspections, reordering, and rework. d. MANAGER: A large local firm has approached me and has offered to sell us one of the components used in our small enginesa component that we are currently producing internally. I need to know costs that we would avoid if this component is purchased so that I can assess the economic merits of this offer. e. MANAGER: Currently, our deluxe lawn mower is losing money. We need to increase profits. I would like to know how much our profits would be if we reduce our variable costs by 50 per mower while maintaining our current sales volume. Also, marketing claims that if we increase advertising expenditures by 1,000,000 and cut prices by 15 percent, we can increase the number of mowers sold by 25 percent. I would like to know which approach offers the most profit, or if a combination of the approaches may be best. f. MANAGER: We are implementing a major quality improvement program. We will be increasing the investment in prevention and detection activities with the expectation of driving down both internal and external failure costs. I expect to see trend reports for all categories of quality costs. I want to see if improving quality really does reduce costs and improve profitability. g. MANAGER: Our engineering design department has proposed a new design for our product. The new design promises to reduce post-purchase costs and, as a consequence, increase market share. I need to know the cost of producing this new design because it uses some new components and requires some different manufacturing processes. I would then like to have a projected income statement based on the new market share and new production costs. The planned selling price will be the same, or maybe even 10 percent lower. Projections based on the two price scenarios would be needed. h. MANAGER: My engineers have said that by redesigning our two main production processes, we can reduce move time by 90 percent and wait time by 85 percent. This would decrease cycle time and virtually eliminate the need to carry finished goods inventories. On-time deliveries would also increase dramatically. This would produce cost savings of nearly 20,000,000 per year. Market share and revenues would also increase. Required: 1. Describe each of the four managerial responsibilities. 2. Identify the managerial activity or activities applicable for each scenario, and indicate the role of accounting information in the activity.
Bradford Company, a manufacturer of small tools, implemented lean manufacturing at the end of 20x1. The companys goal for the year was to increase the ROS to 40 percent of sales. A value-stream team was established and began to work on lean improvements. During the year, the team was able to achieve significant results on several fronts. The Box Scorecard below reflects the performance measures at the beginning of the year, midyear, and end of year. Although the team members were pleased with their progress, they were disappointed in the financial results. They were still far from the targeted ROS of 40 percent. They were also puzzled as to why the improvements made did not translate into significantly improved financial performance. Required: 1. From the scorecard, what was the focus of the value-stream team for the first six months? The second six months? What are the implications of these changes? 2. Using information from the scorecard, offer an explanation for why the financial results were not as good as expected. 3. Suppose that on December 31, 20x2, a potential customer offered to purchase an order of goods that would increase weekly revenues in January by 100,000 and material cost by 30,000. Using the old standard cost system, the projected conversion cost of the order would be 60,000. Would you recommend that the order be accepted or rejected? Explain.
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.
Kent Tessman, manager of a Dairy Products Division, was pleased with his divisions performance over the past three years. Each year, divisional profits had increased, and he had earned a sizable bonus. (Bonuses are a linear function of the divisions reported income.) He had also received considerable attention from higher management. A vice president had told him in confidence that if his performance over the next three years matched his first three, he would be promoted to higher management. Determined to fulfill these expectations, Kent made sure that he personally reviewed every capital budget request. He wanted to be certain that any funds invested would provide good, solid returns. (The divisions cost of capital is 10 percent.) At the moment, he is reviewing two independent requests. Proposal A involves automating a manufacturing operation that is currently labor intensive. Proposal B centers on developing and marketing a new ice cream product. Proposal A requires an initial outlay of 250,000, and Proposal B requires 312,500. Both projects could be funded, given the status of the divisions capital budget. Both have an expected life of six years and have the following projected after-tax cash flows: After careful consideration of each investment, Kent approved funding of Proposal A and rejected Proposal B. Required: 1. Compute the NPV for each proposal. 2. Compute the payback period for each proposal. 3. According to your analysis, which proposal(s) should be accepted? Explain. 4. Explain why Kent accepted only Proposal A. Considering the possible reasons for rejection, would you judge his behavior to be ethical? Explain.
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 president of a small manufacturing firm is concerned about the continual increase in manufacturing costs over the past several years. The following figures provide a time series of the cost per unit for the firms leading product over the past eight years: a. Construct a time series plot. What type of pattern exists in the data? b. Use simple linear regression analysis to find the parameters for the line that minimizes MSE for this time series. c. What is the average cost increase that the firm has been realizing per year? d. Compute an estimate of the cost/unit for next year.
At the beginning of the last quarter of 20x1, Youngston, Inc., a consumer products firm, hired Maria Carrillo to take over one of its divisions. The division manufactured small home appliances and was struggling to survive in a very competitive market. Maria immediately requested a projected income statement for 20x1. In response, the controller provided the following statement: After some investigation, Maria soon realized that the products being produced had a serious problem with quality. She once again requested a special study by the controllers office to supply a report on the level of quality costs. By the middle of November, Maria received the following report from the controller: Maria was surprised at the level of quality costs. They represented 30 percent of sales, which was certainly excessive. She knew that the division had to produce high-quality products to survive. The number of defective units produced needed to be reduced dramatically. Thus, Maria decided to pursue a quality-driven turnaround strategy. Revenue growth and cost reduction could both be achieved if quality could be improved. By growing revenues and decreasing costs, profitability could be increased. After meeting with the managers of production, marketing, purchasing, and human resources, Maria made the following decisions, effective immediately (end of November 20x1): a. More will be invested in employee training. Workers will be trained to detect quality problems and empowered to make improvements. Workers will be allowed a bonus of 10 percent of any cost savings produced by their suggested improvements. b. Two design engineers will be hired immediately, with expectations of hiring one or two more within a year. These engineers will be in charge of redesigning processes and products with the objective of improving quality. They will also be given the responsibility of working with selected suppliers to help improve the quality of their products and processes. Design engineers were considered a strategic necessity. c. Implement a new process: evaluation and selection of suppliers. This new process has the objective of selecting a group of suppliers that are willing and capable of providing nondefective components. d. Effective immediately, the division will begin inspecting purchased components. According to production, many of the quality problems are caused by defective components purchased from outside suppliers. Incoming inspection is viewed as a transitional activity. Once the division has developed a group of suppliers capable of delivering nondefective components, this activity will be eliminated. e. Within three years, the goal is to produce products with a defect rate less than 0.10 percent. By reducing the defect rate to this level, marketing is confident that market share will increase by at least 50 percent (as a consequence of increased customer satisfaction). Products with better quality will help establish an improved product image and reputation, allowing the division to capture new customers and increase market share. f. Accounting will be given the charge to install a quality information reporting system. Daily reports on operational quality data (e.g., percentage of defective units), weekly updates of trend graphs (posted throughout the division), and quarterly cost reports are the types of information required. g. To help direct the improvements in quality activities, kaizen costing is to be implemented. For example, for the year 20x1, a kaizen standard of 6 percent of the selling price per unit was set for rework costs, a 25 percent reduction from the current actual cost. To ensure that the quality improvements were directed and translated into concrete financial outcomes, Maria also began to implement a Balanced Scorecard for the division. By the end of 20x2, progress was being made. Sales had increased to 26,000,000, and the kaizen improvements were meeting or beating expectations. For example, rework costs had dropped to 1,500,000. At the end of 20x3, two years after the turnaround quality strategy was implemented, Maria received the following quality cost report: Maria also received an income statement for 20x3: Maria was pleased with the outcomes. Revenues had grown, and costs had been reduced by at least as much as she had projected for the two-year period. Growth next year should be even greater as she was beginning to observe a favorable effect from the higher-quality products. Also, further quality cost reductions should materialize as incoming inspections were showing much higher-quality purchased components. Required: 1. Identify the strategic objectives, classified by the Balanced Scorecard perspective. Next, suggest measures for each objective. 2. Using the results from Requirement 1, describe Marias strategy using a series of if-then statements. Next, prepare a strategy map. 3. Explain how you would evaluate the success of the quality-driven turnaround strategy. What additional information would you like to have for this evaluation? 4. Explain why Maria felt that the Balanced Scorecard would increase the likelihood that the turnaround strategy would actually produce good financial outcomes. 5. Advise Maria on how to encourage her employees to align their actions and behavior with the turnaround strategy.
Danna Wise, president of Tidwell Company, recently returned from a conference on quality and productivity. At the conference, she was told that many American firms have quality costs totaling 20 to 30% of sales. The quality experts at the conference convinced her that a company could increase its profitability by improving quality. However, she was of the opinion that the quality of Tidwell Company was much less than 20%probably more in the 4 to 6% range. However, because the potential for increasing profits was so great if she was wrong, she decided to request a preliminary estimate of the total quality costs currently being incurred. She asked her controller for a summary of quality costs, with the costs classified into four categories: prevention, appraisal, internal failure, or external failure. She also wanted the costs expressed as a percentage of both sales and profits. The controller had his staff assemble the following information from the past year, 20X1: a. Sales revenue, 37,240,000; net income, 4,000,000. b. During the year, customers returned 40,000 units needing repair. Repair cost averages 9 per unit. c. Twelve inspectors are employed, each earning an annual salary of 80,000. The inspectors are involved only with final inspection (product acceptance). d. Total scrap is 200,000 units. Of this total, ninety percent is quality related. The cost of scrap is about 10 per unit. e. Each year, approximately 800,000 units are rejected in final inspection. Of these units, seventy-five percent can be recovered through rework. The cost of rework is 1.80 per I unit. f. A customer cancelled an order that would have increased profits by 600,000. The customers reason for cancellation was poor product performance. g. The company employs 10 full-time employees in its complaint department. Each earns 48,600 a year. h. The company gave sales allowances totaling 180,000 due to substandard products being sent to the customer. i. The company requires all new employees to take its 4-hour quality training program. The estimated annual cost of the program is 120,000. Required: 1. Prepare a simple quality cost report classifying costs by category. 2. Compute the quality cost-sales ratio. Also, compare the total quality costs with total profits. Should Danna be concerned with the level of quality costs? 3. Prepare a pie chart for the quality costs. Discuss the distribution of quality costs among the four categories. Are they properly distributed? Explain. 4. Discuss how the company can improve its overall quality and at the same time reduce total quality costs. 5. By how much will profits increase if quality costs are reduced to 3% of sales?
Wayne Johnson, president of Banshee Company, recently returned from a conference on quality and productivity. At the conference, he was told that many American firms have quality costs totaling 20 to 30 percent of sales. He, however, was skeptical about this statistic. But even if the quality gurus were right, he was sure that his companys quality costs were much lowerprobably less than 5 percent. On the other hand, if he was wrong, he would be passing up an opportunity to improve profits significantly and simultaneously strengthen his competitive position. The possibility was at least worth exploring. He knew that his company produced most of the information needed for quality cost reportingbut there never was a need to bother with any formal quality data gathering and analysis. This conference, however, had convinced him that a firms profitability can increase significantly by improving qualityprovided the potential for improvement exists. Thus, before committing the company to a quality improvement program, Wayne requested a preliminary estimate of the total quality costs currently being incurred. He also indicated that the costs should be classified into four categories: prevention, appraisal, internal failure, or external failure. He has asked you to prepare a summary of quality costs and to compare the total costs to sales and profits. To assist you in this task, the following information has been prepared from the past year, 20x5: a. Sales revenue, 15,000,000; net income, 1,500,000. b. During the year, customers returned 90,000 units needing repair. Repair cost averages 1 per unit. c. Four inspectors are employed, each earning an annual salary of 60,000. These four inspectors are involved only with final inspection (product acceptance). d. Total scrap is 150,000 units. Of this total, 60 percent is quality related. The cost of scrap is about 5 per unit. e. Each year, approximately 450,000 units are rejected in final inspection. Of these units, 80 percent can be recovered through rework. The cost of rework is 0.75 per unit. f. A customer cancelled an order that would have increased profits by 150,000. The customers reason for cancellation was poor product performance. g. The company employs three full-time employees in its complaint department. Each earns 40,500 a year. h. The company gave sales allowances totaling 45,000 due to substandard products being sent to the customer. i. The company requires all new employees to take its three-hour quality training program. The estimated annual cost of the program is 30,000. Required: 1. Prepare a simple quality cost report classifying costs by category. 2. Compute the quality cost-to-sales ratio. Also, compare the total quality costs with total profits. Should Wayne be concerned with the level of quality costs? 3. Prepare a pie chart for the quality costs. Discuss the distribution of quality costs among the four categories. Are they properly distributed? Explain. 4. Discuss how the company can improve its overall quality and at the same time reduce total quality costs. 5. By how much will profits increase if quality costs are reduced to 2.5 percent of sales?
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.
Dantrell Palmer has just been appointed manager of Kirchner Glass Products Division. He has two years to make the division profitable. If the division is still showing a loss after two years, it will be eliminated, and Dantrell will be reassigned as an assistant divisional manager in another division. The divisional income statement for the most recent year is as follows: Upon arriving at the division, Dantrell requested the following data on the divisions three products: He also gathered data on a proposed new product (Product D). If this product is added, it would displace one of the current products; the quantity that could be produced and sold would equal the quantity sold of the product it displaces, although demand limits the maximum quantity that could be sold to 20,000 units. Because of specialized production equipment, it is not possible for the new product to displace part of the production of a second product. The information on Product D is as follows: Required: 1. Prepare segmented income statements for Products A, B, and C. 2. Determine the products that Dantrell should produce for the coming year. Prepare segmented income statements that prove your combination is the best for the division. By how much will profits improve given the combination that you selected? (Hint: Your combination may include one, two, or three products.)
The New York Division of Ram Co. currently earns an ROI of 18%. The department manager is considering a new project, which requires a $100,000 investment in operating assets and generates a net operating income of $16,000. Assume that the company’s minimum required rate of return is 14%. Which of the following statement is true? a)If the manager is evaluated based on ROI, she will make the new investment because it increases the department’s ROI by 2%. b)If the manager is evaluated based on ROI, she will make the new investment because it generates an ROI that is 2% greater than the company’s minimum required rate of return. c)If the manager is evaluated based on residual income, she will make the new investment because it increases the department’s residual income by $2,000. d)If the manager is evaluated based on residual income, she will not make the new investment because it decreases the department’s residual income by $2,000.