Chapter 14, Problem 7QAP

Leather Works is a family-owned maker of leather travel bags and briefcases located in the northeastern part of the United States. Foreign competition has forced its owner, Heather Gray, to explore new ways to meet the competition. One of her cousins, Wallace Hayes, who recently graduated from college with a major in accounting, told her about the use of cost variance analysis to learn about efficiencies of production. In May of last year, Heather asked Matt Jones, chief accountant, and Alfred Prudest, production manager, to implement a standard costing system. Matt and Alfred, in turn, retained Shannon Leikam, an accounting professor at Hardings College, to set up a standard costing system by using information supplied to her by Matts and Alfreds staff. To verify that the information was accurate, Shannon visited the plant and measured workers output using time and motion studies. During those visits, she was not accompanied by either Matt or Alfred, and the workers knew about Shannons schedule in advance. The cost system was implemented in June of last year. Recently, the following dialogue took place among Heather, Matt, and Alfred: HEATHER: How is the business performing? ALFRED: You know, we are producing a lot more than we used to, thanks to the contract that you helped obtain from Lean, Inc., for laptop covers. (Lean is a national supplier of computer accessories.) MATT: Thank goodness for that new product. It has kept us from sinking even more due to the inroads into our business made by those foreign suppliers of leather goods. HEATHER: What about the standard costing system? MATT: The variances are mostly favorable, except for the first few months when the supplier of leather started charging more. HEATHER: How did the union members take to the standards? ALFRED: Not bad. They grumbled a bit at first, but they have taken it in stride. Weve consistently shown favorable direct labor efficiency variances and direct materials usage variances. The direct labor rate variance has been flat. MATT: It should be since direct labor rates are negotiated by the union representative at the start of the year and remain the same for the entire year. HEATHER: Matt, would you send me the variance report for laptop covers immediately? The following chart summarizes the direct materials and direct labor variances from November of last year through April of this year (extracted from the report provided by Matt). Standards for each laptop cover are as follows: a. Three feet of direct materials at 7.50 per foot b. Forty-five minutes of direct labor at 14 per hour In addition, the data for May of this year, but not the variances for the month, are as follows: Actual direct labor cost per hour exceeded the budgeted rate by 0.10 per hour. Required: 1. For May of this year, calculate the price and quantity variances for direct labor and direct materials. 2. Discuss the trend of the direct materials and labor variances. 3. What type of actions must the workers have taken during the period they were being observed for the setting of standards? 4. What can be done to ensure that the standards are set correctly? (CMA adapted)

Ingles Corporation is a manufacturer of tables sold to schools, restaurants, hotels, and other institutions. The table tops are manufactured by Ingles, but the table legs are purchased from an outside supplier. The Assembly Department takes a manufactured table top and attaches the four purchased table legs. It takes 16 minutes of labor to assemble a table. The company follows a policy of producing enough tables to ensure that 40 percent of next months sales are in the finished goods inventory. Ingles also purchases sufficient materials to ensure that materials inventory is 60 percent of the following months scheduled production. Ingless sales budget in units for the next quarter is as follows: Ingless ending inventories in units for July 31 are as follows: Required: 1. Calculate the number of tables to be produced during August. 2. Disregarding your response to Requirement 1, assume the required production units for August and September are 2,100 and 1,900, respectively, and the July 31 materials inventory is 4,000 units. Compute the number of table legs to be purchased in August. 3. Assume that Ingles Corporation will produce 2,340 units in September. How many employees will be required for the Assembly Department in September? (Fractional employees are acceptable since employees can be hired on a part-time basis. Assume a 40-hour week and a 4-week month.) (CMA adapted)

The PUPPY SAFETY Corp. is dedicated to the wholesale of microfiche systems to detect the location of lost pets. The company has a production capacity of 10,000 system units and currently only produces 8,000. The company is operating above its tie point. The sale price per system is $500.00 and the related costs are presented later. Required: Indicate whether this business should accept or reject a special order of 500 microchips at a price of $300. The client is the Humane Society and it is an order that will not be repeated in the future as this comes from non-recurring funds. When we learned that the Humane Society was seeking bids, we took it upon ourselves to send our sales specialists who brought a proposal prepared following the usual sales and marketing practices. Despite being a special order, if accepted, it will follow the typical pattern of routine orders in terms of transaction costs. This order has no effect on the routine business of PUPPY SAFETY. Manufacturing costs…

Zuzu is a large manufacturer of snack cakes. The company operates distribution centers in Chicago. The distribution center bakes and packages the snack cakes and ships them to grocery warehouses throughout the country. Because of the high standards set for both quality and appearance, there is a reasonable number of “seconds” that do not meet standards and are sold to company outlets for sale at reduced prices. In recent years, the company’s average yield has been 90% of first-quality products for sale to grocery warehouses. The remaining 10% is sent to the outlet store. Zuzu’s performance-evaluation system pays its distribution center managers substantial bonuses if the company achieves annual budgeted profit numbers. In the last quarter of 2017, Noah Spalding, Zuzu’s controller, noted a significant increase in yield percentage of the Chicago distribution center, from 90% to 98%. This increase resulted in a 10% increase in the center’s profits. During a recent trip to the Chicago…

Zuzu is a large manufacturer of snack cakes. The company operates distribution centers in Chicago. The distribution center bakes and packages the snack cakes and ships them to grocery warehouses throughout the country. Because of the high standards set for both quality and appearance, there is a reasonable number of “seconds” that do not meet standards and are sold to company outlets for sale at reduced prices. In recent years, the company’s average yield has been 90% of first-quality products for sale to grocery warehouses. The remaining 10% is sent to the outlet store. Zuzu’s performance-evaluation system pays its distribution center managers substantial bonuses if the company achieves annual budgeted profit numbers. In the last quarter of 2017, Noah Spalding, Zuzu’s controller, noted a significant increase in yield percentage of the Chicago distribution center, from 90% to 98%. This increase resulted in a 10% increase in the center’s profits. During a recent trip to the Chicago…

A manufacturer of packaging for companies that produce breakfast cereals is considering alternatives regarding the process it uses to pre-process carton paper used to make the packaging. Historically, the company has been using equipment which cuts raw carton paper received from its various suppliers. This cut paper is further painted and assembled into a box shape by two other pieces of equipment. Recently, however, most of its customers began requesting that certain design elements be pressed into the packaging, giving the packaging more visual appeal. The customers were willing to pay more for the added service, making it particularly lucrative for the firm to have incorporate this possibility into its packaging offerings. Managers believed that the existing equipment would be able to handle the new process with certain modifications. In addition to modifying the existing equipment, the company two other alternatives. All alternatives will be able to produce the desired result, will…

Green Grow Incorporated (GGI) manufactures lawn fertilizer. Because of the product’s very high quality, GGI often receives special orders from agricultural research groups. For each type of fertilizer sold, each bag is carefully filled to have the precise mix of components advertised for that type of fertilizer. GGI’s operating capacity is 22,000 one-hundred-pound bags per month, and it currently is selling 20,000 bags manufactured in 20 batches of 1,000 bags each. The firm just received a request for a special order of 5,000 one-hundred-pound bags of fertilizer for $130,000 from APAC, a research organization. The production costs would be the same, but there would be no variable selling costs. Delivery and other packaging and distribution services would cause a one-time $2,500 cost for GGI. The special order would be processed in two batches of 2,500 bags each. (No incremental batch-level costs are anticipated. Most of the batch-level costs in this case are short-term fixed costs,…

Ingles Corporation is a manufacturer of tables sold to schools, restaurants, hotels, and other institutions. The table tops are manufactured by Ingles, but the table legs are purchased from an outside supplier. The Assembly Department takes a manufactured table top and attaches the four purchased table legs. It takes 16 minutes of labor to assemble a table. The company follows a policy of producing enough tables to ensure that 40 percent of next month’s sales are in the finished goods inventory. Ingles also purchases sufficient materials to ensure that materials inventory is 60 percent of the following month’s scheduled production. Ingles’s sales budget inunits for the next quarter is as follows: July 2,450August 2,900September 2,100Ingles’s ending inventories in units for July 31 are as follows:Finished goods 1,900Materials (legs) 4,000 Required:1. Calculate the number of tables to be produced during August. 2. Disregarding your response to Requirement 1, assume the required…

Suppose further that Snappy decides to make changes in its ordering and receiving-and-storing practices. By placing long-run orders with its key suppliers, Snappy expects to reduce the number of orders to 200 and the cost per order to $25 per order. By redesigning the layout of the warehouse and reconfiguring the crates in which the marble tiles are moved, Snappy expects to reduce the number of loads moved to 3,125 and the cost per load moved to $28. Will Snappy achieve its target operating income of $0.30 per tile in 2017? Show your calculations.