1a.
Throughput time is the total amount of time required to complete a process. For example, the time required to manufacture machinery from the beginning till its end is the throughput time. Processing capacity, inspection time, move time, and queue time all contribute to throughput time. Wait time is not included in the calculation of throughput time.
:
The throughput time for each month.
2a.
The various quality control measures that result in a positive direction will help in improving the company’s performance. For instance, testing the units produced and determining if they are within the defined set of quality criteria.
To identify:
The areas in which the company seems to be improving.
3a.
Throughput time:
Throughput time is the elapsed time from the time of inception of the production process till the goods are dispatched to the customer.
Manufacturing cycle efficiency:
The manufacturing cycle refers to the amount of time in the manufacturing process that is spent on enriching or improving the product.
:
The throughput time and MCE for Month 5.
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MANAGERIAL ACCOUNTING - CONNECT ACCESS E
- Suspicious Acquisition of Data, Ethical Issues Bill Lewis, manager of the Thomas Electronics Division, called a meeting with his controller, Brindon Peterson, and his marketing manager, Patty Fritz. The following is a transcript of the conversation that took place during the meeting: Bill: Brindon, the variable costing system that you developed has proved to be a big plus for our division. Our success in winning bids has increased, and as a result our revenues have increased by 25%. However, if we intend to meet this years profit targets, we are going to need something extraam I right, Patty? Patty: Absolutely. While we have been able to win more bids, we still are losing too many, particularly to our major competitor, Kilborn Electronics. If we knew more about their bidding strategy, we could be more successful at competing with them. Brindon: Would knowing their variable costs help? Patty: Certainly. It would give me their minimum price. With that knowledge, Im sure that we could find a way to beat them on several jobs, particularly on those jobs where we are at least as efficient. It would also help us to identify where we are not cost competitive. With this information, we might be able to find ways to increase our efficiency. Brindon: Well, I have good news. Ive been talking with Carl Penobscot, Kilborns assistant controller. Carl doesnt feel appreciated by Kilborn and wants to make a change. He could easily fit into our team here. Plus, Carl has been preparing for a job switch by quietly copying Kilborns accounting files and records. Hes already given me some data that reveal bids that Kilborn made on several jobs. If we can come to a satisfactory agreement with Carl, hell bring the rest of the information with him. Well easily be able to figure out Kilborns prospective bids and find ways to beat them. Besides, I could use another accountant on my staff. Bill, would you authorize my immediate hiring of Carl with a favorable compensation package? Bill: I know that you need more staff, Brindon, but is this the right thing to do? It sounds like Carl is stealing those files, and surely Kilborn considers this information confidential. I have real ethical and legal concerns about this. Why dont we meet with Laurie, our attorney, and determine any legal problems? Required: 1. Is Carls behavior ethical? What would Kilborn think? 2. Is Bill correct in supposing that there are ethical and/or legal problems involved with the hiring of Carl? (Reread the section on corporate codes of conduct in Chapter 1.) What would you do if you were Bill? Explain.arrow_forwardDataSpan, Incorporated, automated its plant at the start of the current year and installed a flexible manufacturing system. The company is also evaluating its suppliers and moving toward Lean Production. Many adjustment problems have been encountered, including problems relating to performance measurement. After much study, the company has decided to use the performance measures below, and it has gathered data relating to these measures for the first four months of operations. Month 1 2 3 4 Throughput time (days) ? ? ? ? Delivery cycle time (days) ? ? ? ? Manufacturing cycle efficiency (MCE) ? ? ? ? Percentage of on-time deliveries 82% 77% 74% 71% Total sales (units) 3830 3667 3479 3347 Management 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 4 Move time per unit 0.8 0.5 0.6 0.6 Process time per unit 2.3 2.2…arrow_forwardDataSpan, Inc., automated its plant at the start of the current year and installed a flexible manufacturing system. The company is also evaluating its suppliers and moving toward Lean Production. Many adjustment problems have been encountered, including problems relating to performance measurement. After much study, the company has decided to use the performance measures below, and it has gathered data relating to these measures for the first four months of operations. Month 1 2 3 4 Throughput time (days) ? ? ? ? Delivery cycle time (days) ? ? ? ? Manufacturing cycle efficiency (MCE) ? ? ? ? Percentage of on-time deliveries 78 % 73 % 70 % 67 % Total sales (units) 2330 2230 2116 2036 Management 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 4 Move time per unit 0.8…arrow_forward
- DataSpan, Inc., automated its plant at the start of the current year and installed a flexible manufacturing system. The company is also evaluating its suppliers and moving toward Lean Production. Many adjustment problems have been encountered, including problems relating to performance measurement. After much study, the company has decided to use the performance measures below, and it has gathered data relating to these measures for the first four months of operations. Month 1 2 4 Throughput time (days) Delivery cycle time (days) Manufacturing cycle efficiency (MCE) Percentage of on-time deliveries Total sales (units) ? ? ? 89% 84% 81% 78% 3880 3714 3524 3390 Management 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) 2 3 4 Move time per unit Process time per unit Wait time per order before start of production Queue time per unit Inspection time per…arrow_forwardRequired Information [The following information applies to the questions displayed below.] McKeoun Enterprises is a large machine tool company now experiencing alarming increases in maintenance expense in each of its four production departments. Maintenance costs are currently allocated to the production departments on the basis of direct labor hours incurred in the production department. To provide pressure for the production departments to use less maintenance, and to provide an incentive for the maintenance department to become more efficient, McKeoun has decided to investigate new methods of allocating maintenance costs. One suggestion now being evaluated is a form of outsourcing. The producing departments could purchase maintenance service from an outside supplier. That is, they could choose elther to use an outside supplier of maintenance or to be charged an amount based on their use of direct labor hours. The following table shows the direct labor hours in each department, the…arrow_forwardIn 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.arrow_forward
- Pareto chart and cost of quality report for a manufacturing company The president of Mission Inc. has been concerned about the growth in costs over the last several years. The president asked the controller to perform an activity analysis to gain a better insight into these costs. The activity analysis revealed the following: The production process is complicated by quality problems, requiring the production manager to expedite production and dispose of scrap. Instructions 1. Prepare a Pareto chart of the company activities. 2. Classify the activities into prevention, appraisal, internal failure, external failure, and not costs of quality (producing product). Classify the activities into value-added and non-value-added activities. 3. Use the activity cost information to determine the percentages of total costs that are prevention, appraisal, internal failure, external failure, and not costs of quality. 4. Determine the percentages of total costs that are value-added and non-value-added. 5. Interpret the information.arrow_forwardProduct decisions under bottlenecked operations Mill Metals Inc. has three grades of metal product, Type 5, Type 10, and Type 20. Financial data for the three grades are as follows: Mills operations require all three grades to be melted in a furnace before being formed. The furnace runs 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and is a production bottleneck. The furnace hours required per unit of each product are as follows: The Marketing Department is considering a new marketing and sales campaign. Which product should be emphasized in the marketing and sales campaign in order to maximize profitability?arrow_forwardIn 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).arrow_forward
- Types of Responsibility Centers Consider each of the following independent scenarios: a. Terrin Belson, plant manager for the laser printer factory of Compugear Inc., brushed his hair back and sighed. December had been a bad month. Two machines had broken down, and some factory production workers (all on salary) were idled for part of the month. Materials prices increased, and insurance premiums on the factory increased. No way out of it; costs were going up. He hoped that the marketing vice president would be able to push through some price increases, but that really wasnt his department. b. Joanna Pauly was delighted to see that her ROI figures had increased for the third straight year. She was sure that her campaign to lower costs and use machinery more efficiently (enabling her factories to sell several older machines) was the reason why. Joanna planned to take full credit for the improvements at her semiannual performance review. c. Gil Rodriguez, sales manager for ComputerWorks, was not pleased with a memo from headquarters detailing the recent cost increases for the laser printer line. Headquarters suggested raising prices. Great, thought Gil, an increase in price will kill sales and revenue will go down. Why cant the plant shape up and cut costs like every other company in America is doing? Why turn this into my problem? d. Susan Whitehorse looked at the quarterly profit and loss statement with disgust. Revenue was down, and cost was upwhat a combination! Then she had an idea. If she cut back on maintenance of equipment and let a product engineer go, expenses would decreaseperhaps enough to reverse the trend in income. e. Shonna Lowry had just been hired to improve the fortunes of the Southern Division of ABC Inc. She met with top staff and hammered out a 3-year plan to improve the situation. A centerpiece of the plan is the retiring of obsolete equipment and the purchasing of state-of-the-art, computer-assisted machinery. The new machinery would take time for the workers to learn to use, but once that was done, waste would be virtually eliminated. Required: For each of the above independent scenarios, indicate the type of responsibility center involved (cost, revenue, profit, or investment).arrow_forwardLindell Manufacturing embarked on an ambitious quality program that is centered on continual improvement. This improvement is operationalized by declining quality costs from year to year. Lindell rewards plant managers, production supervisors, and workers with bonuses ranging from 1,000 to 10,000 if their factory meets its annual quality cost goals. Len Smith, manager of Lindells Boise plant, felt obligated to do everything he could to provide this increase to his employees. Accordingly, he has decided to take the following actions during the last quarter of the year to meet the plants budgeted quality cost targets: a. Decrease inspections of the process and final product by 50% and transfer inspectors temporarily to quality training programs. Len believes this move will increase the inspectors awareness of the importance of quality; also, decreasing inspection will produce significantly less downtime and less rework. By increasing the output and decreasing the costs of internal failure, the plant can meet the budgeted reductions for internal failure costs. Also, by showing an increase in the costs of quality training, the budgeted level for prevention costs can be met. b. Delay replacing and repairing defective products until the beginning of the following year. While this may increase customer dissatisfaction somewhat, Len believes that most customers expect some inconvenience. Besides, the policy of promptly dealing with customers who are dissatisfied could be reinstated in 3 months. In the meantime, the action would significantly reduce the costs of external failure, allowing the plant to meet its budgeted target. c. Cancel scheduled worker visits to customers plants. This program, which has been very well received by customers, enables Lindell workers to see just how the machinery they make is used by the customer and also gives them first-hand information on any remaining problems with the machinery. Workers who went on previous customer site visits came back enthusiastic and committed to Lindells quality program. Lindells quality program staff believes that these visits will reduce defects during the following year. Required: 1. Evaluate Lens ethical behavior. In this evaluation, consider his concern for his employees. Was he justified in taking the actions described? If not, what should he have done? 2. Assume that the company views Lens behavior as undesirable. What can the company do to discourage it? 3. Assume that Len is a CMA and a member of the IMA. Refer to the ethical code for management accountants in Chapter 1. Were any of these ethical standards violated?arrow_forwardUse ABC to allocate manufacturing overhead Several years after reengineering its production process, Dettling Corporation hired a new controller, Alana Metzgar. She developed an ABC system very similar to the one used by Dettling’s chief rival. Part of the reason Metzgar developed the ABC system was because Dettling’s profits had been declining, even though the company had shifted its product mix toward the product that had appeared most profitable under the old system. Before adopting the new ABC system, the company had used a plantwide overhead rate based on direct labor hours that was developed years ago. For the upcoming year, Dettling’s budgeted ABC manufacturing overhead allocation rates are as follows on the 1st picture: The number of parts is now a feasible allocation base because Dettling recently installed a plantwide computer system. Dettling produces two wheel models: Standard and Deluxe. Budgeted data for the upcoming year are as follows on the 2nd picture: The…arrow_forward
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