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
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.
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Managerial Accounting: The Cornerstone of Business Decision-Making
- Cain Components manufactures and distributes various plumbing products used in homes and other buildings. Over time, the production staff has noticed that products they considered easy to make were difficult to sell at margins considered reasonable, while products that seemed to take a lot of staff time were selling well despite recent price increases. A summer intern has suggested that the cost system might be providing misleading information.  The controller decided that a good summer project for the intern would be to develop, in one self-contained area of the plant, an alternative cost system with which to compare the current system. The intern identified the following cost pools and, after discussion with some plant personnel, appropriate cost drivers for each pool. There were:  Cost Pools  Costs Activity Drivers Receiving $ 600,000 Direct material cost Manufacturing  5,500,000 Machine-hours Machine setup  900,000 Production runs Shipping  1,000,000 Units shipped…arrow_forwardJireh Limited also manufactures prefab components for the housing industry. They have just been offered a new four year contract to supply a component, subject to them meeting certain quality requirements set by GREDA Ghana. The production manager is concerned that the current machine, which has been fully depreciated, will not be able to meet the stringent quality controls that will be required because the technology is obsolete, and the machine is unreliable. The company currently spends £50,000 per year to maintain and operate this machine which has no secondhand market value. On the basis of the production managerʼs recommendation, management has decided to replace the current machine. It is estimated that the replacement machine will cost £1 million with a four-year useful life. The companyʼs depreciation policy is to use a 20% reducing balance method over the life of the asset. As part of the purchase agreement for the new machine, the suppliers are offering a special maintenance…arrow_forwardBonita Inc., a manufacturer of steel school lockers, plans to purchase a new punch press for use in its manufacturing process. After contacting the appropriate vendors, the purchasing department received differing terms and options from each vendor. The Engineering Department has determined that each vendor's punch press is substantially identical and each has a useful life of 20 years. In addition, Engineering has estimated that required year-end maintenance costs will be $1,030 per year for the first 5 years, $2,030 per year for the next 10 years, and $3,030 per year for the last 5 years. Following is each vendor's sales package. Vendor A: $58,000 cash at time of delivery and 10 year-end payments of $16,360 each. Vendor A offers all its customers the right to purchase at the time of sale a separate 20-year maintenance service contract, under which Vendor A will perform all year-end maintenance at a one-time initial cost of $9,640. Vendor B: Forty semiannual payments of $9,120 each,…arrow_forward
- Blackburn Inc. uses Otavalo Manufacturing and Piura Company to buy two precision machined parts used in the manufacture of its permanent-magnet motors: Part #625 and Part #827. Consider two activities: testing parts and reordering parts. After the two parts are inserted, testing is done to ensure that the two parts work as intended. Reordering occurs because one or both of the parts have failed the test and it is necessary to replenish part inventories. Activity cost information and other data needed for supplier costing are as follows: I.   Activity Costs Caused by Suppliers (testing failures and reordering as a result) Activity Costs    Testing parts $4,500,000 Reordering parts 1,125,000 II.   Supplier Data  Otavalo Manufacturing  Piura Company            Part #625 Part #827  Part #625 Part #827         Unit purchase price $30 $78  $36 $84         Units purchased 450,000 225,000  56,250 56,250         Failed tests 4,500…arrow_forwardAlderon 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…arrow_forwardEmery Manufacturing Company produces component parts for the farm equipment industry and has recently undergone a major computer system conversion. Jake Murray, the controller, has established a troubleshooting team to alleviate accounting problems that have occurred since the conversion. Jake has chosen Gus Swanson, assistant controller, to head the team that will include Linda Wheeler, cost accountant; Cindy Madsen, financial analyst; Randy Lewis, general accounting supervisor; and Max Crandall, financial accountant. The team has been meeting weekly for the last month. Gus insists on being part of all the team conversations in order to gather information, to make the final decision on any ideas or actions that the team develops, and to prepare a weekly report for Jake. He has also used this team as a forum to discuss issues and disputes about him and other members of Emerys top management team. At last weeks meeting, Gus told the team that he thought a competitor might purchase the common stock of Emery, because he had overheard Jake talking about this on the telephone. As a result, most of Emerys employees now informally discuss the sale of Emerys common stock and how it will affect their jobs. Required: Is Gus Swansons discussion with the team about the prospective sale of Emery unethical? Discuss, citing specific standards from the code of ethical conduct to support your position. (CMA adapted)arrow_forward
- Boston Executive. Inc., produces executive limousines and currently manufactures the mini-bar inset at these costs: The company received an offer from Elite Mini-Bars to produce the insets for $2,100 per Unit and supply 1,000 mini-bars for the coming years estimated production. If the company accepts this offer and shuts down production of this part of the business, production workers and supervisors will be reassigned to other areas. Assume that for the short-term decision-making process demonstrated in this problem, the companys total labor costs (direct labor and supervisor salaries) will remain the same if the bar inserts are purchased. The specialized equipment cannot be used and has no market value. However, the space occupied by the mini bar production can be used by a different production group that will lease it for $55,000 per year. Should the company make or buy the mini-bar insert?arrow_forwardThe demand for solvent, one of numerous products manufactured by Logan Industries Inc., has dropped sharply because of recent competition from a similar product. The companys chemists are currently completing tests of various new formulas, and it is anticipated that the manufacture of a superior product can be started on November 1, one month in the future. No changes will be needed in the present production facilities to manufacture the new product because only the mixture of the various materials will be changed. The controller has been asked by the president of the company for advice on whether to continue production during October or to suspend the manufacture of solvent until November 1. The following data have been assembled: The production costs and selling and administrative expenses, based on production of 10,000 units in September, are as follows: Sales for October are expected to drop about 40% below those of September. No significant changes are anticipated in the fixed costs or variable costs per unit. No extra costs will be incurred in discontinuing operations in the portion of the plant associated with solvent. The inventory of solvent at the beginning and end of October is not expected to be significant (material). Instructions 1. Prepare an estimated income statement in absorption costing form for October for solvent, assuming that production continues during the month. 2. Prepare an estimated income statement in variable costing form for October for solvent, assuming that production continues during the month. 3. What would be the estimated operating loss if the solvent production were temporarily suspended for October? 4. What advice should you give to management?arrow_forwardSuppose 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.arrow_forward
- Posavek is a wholesale supplier of building supplies building contractors, hardware stores, and home-improvement centers in the Boston metropolitan area. Over the years, Posavek has expanded its operations to serve customers across the nation and now employs over 200 people as technical representatives, buyers, warehouse workers, and sales and office staff. Most recently, Posavek has experienced fierce competition from the large online discount stores. In addition, the company is suffering from operational inefficiencies related to its archaic information system. Posavek revenue cycle procedures are described in the following paragraphs. Revenue Cycle Posaveks sales department representatives receive orders via traditional mail, e-mail, telephone, and the occasional walk-in customer. Because Posavek is a wholesaler, the vast majority of its business is conducted on a credit basis. The process begins in the sales department, where the sales clerk enters the customers order into the centralized computer sales order system. The computer and file server are housed in Posaveks small data processing department. If the customer has done business with Posavek in the past, his or her data are already on file. If the customer is a first-time buyer, however, the clerk creates a new record in the customer account file. The system then creates a record of the transaction in the open sales order file. When the order is entered, an electronic copy of it is sent to the customers e-mail address as confirmation. A clerk in the warehouse department periodically reviews the open sales order file from a terminal and prints two copies of a stock release document for each new sale, which he uses to pick the items sold from the shelves. The warehouse clerk sends one copy of the stock release to the sales department and the second copy, along with the goods, to the shipping department. The warehouse clerk then updates the inventory subsidiary file to reflect the items and quantities shipped. Upon receipt of the stock release document, the sales clerk accesses the open sales order file from a terminal, closes the sales order, and files the stock release document in the sales department. The sales order system automatically posts these transactions to the sales, inventory control, and cost-of-goods-sold accounts in the general ledger file. Upon receipt of the goods and the stock release, the shipping department clerk prepares the goods for shipment to the customer. The clerk prepares three copies of the bill of lading. Two of these go with the goods to the carrier and the third, along with the stock release document, is filed in the shipping department. The billing department clerk reviews the closed sales orders from a terminal and prepares two copies of the sales invoice. One copy is mailed to the customer, and the other is filed in the billing department. The clerk then creates a new record in the accounts receivable subsidiary file. The sales order system automatically updates the accounts receivable control account in the general ledger file. CASH RECEIPTS PROCEDURES Mail room clerks open customer cash receipts, reviews the check and remittance advices for completeness, and prepares two copies of a remittance list. One copy is sent with the checks to the cash receipts department. The second copy of the remittance advices are sent to the billing department. When the cash receipts clerk receives the checks and remittance list, he verifies the checks received against those on the remittance list and signs the checks For Deposit Only. Once the checks are endorsed, he records the receipts in the cash receipts journal from his terminal. The clerk then fills out a deposit slip and deposits the checks in the bank. Upon receipt of the remittances, the billing department clerk records the amounts in the accounts receivable subsidiary ledger from the department terminal. The system automatically updates the AR control account in the general ledger Posavek has hired your public accounting firm to review its sales order procedures for internal control compliance and to make recommendations for changes. Required a. Create a data flow diagram of the current system. b. Create a system flowchart of the existing system. c. Analyze the physical internal control weaknesses in the system. d. (Optional) Prepare a system flowchart of a redesigned computer-based system that resolves the control weaknesses that you identified. Explain your solution.arrow_forwardAt 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.arrow_forwardMaxwell 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?arrow_forward
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