The comptroller wants to set the standards according to a study done by a consulting firm for a company. The consulting firm used the following assumptions: The machines never break down. Workers never take a break. The material used is perfect. The material arrives on time. No one takes a day off. Workers are well trained. Workers do not make defective units. What kinds of standards are these? Will the workers be motivated to achieve these standards?
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- Centurion Homes of Calgary, Alberta, builds houses and has four construction crews. The supervisors hire and terminate workers and keep their hourly records. Each Friday morning, the supervisors telephone their workers’ hours to the home office, where accountants prepare the weekly pay cheques. Around noon, the supervisors pick up the pay cheques. They return to the construction site and pay the workers at day’s end. What is the internal control weakness in this situation? Propose a way to improve the internal controls.arrow_forwardYour HR Manager approaches you regarding a worker whose performance reports have been deteriorating lately and seeks your opinion on whether to keep or fire the worker. To balance things out, the manager says that the business has invested a lot of time and money in educating this employee on company-specific procedures, and that it would be a shame to let that money go to waste. What response would you have?arrow_forwardWhat internal control or procedure(s) would provide protection against the following threats? A factory supervisor wrote off a robotic assembly machine as being sold for salvage but actually sold the machine and pocketed the proceeds. A factory supervisor accessed the production planning file and inflated the standards for work completed in his department. Consequently, future performance reports show favorable budget variances for that department. Overproduction of a slow-moving product resulted in excessive inventory that had to eventually be marked down and sold at a lossarrow_forward
- The head of the accounting department is not satisfied with the implementation of the new system. He believes that the new system will result in job losses for many of the bookkeepers. They are threatening industrial action. In your role as project sponsor, what should you do to resolve the situation?arrow_forwardWhat internal control or procedure(s) would provide protection against the following threats? A factory supervisor wrote off a robotic assembly machine as being sold for salvage but actually sold the machine and pocketed the proceeds. A factory supervisor accessed the production planning file and inflated the standards for work completed in his department. Consequently, future performance reports show favorable budget variances for that department. Overproduction of a slow-moving product resulted in excessive inventory that had to eventually be marked down and sold at a loss Storeroom issues materials to production once the production is started. A production employee stole items of work-in-process inventoryarrow_forwardWhich of the following would not be considered a cost ofquality?a. Lost sales due to bad publicity generated by productfailures.b. The cost of repairing merchandise that was dropped bya forklift in the factory.c. The amount of a bonus paid to the work team producingthe fewest defective units.d. The cost of the external audit.arrow_forward
- Rachel Boyce, president of a company that manufactures electronic components, has a number of questions concerning quality and quality costs. She has heard a few things about quality and has asked you to respond to the following questions. Required: 1. What does it mean to have a quality product or service? Explain how product quality and conformance are related. 2. Yesterday, my quality manager told me that we need to redefine what we mean by a defective product. He said that conforming to specifications ignores the cost of product variability and that further reduction of product variability is a veritable gold minejust waiting to be mined. What did he mean?arrow_forwardDarnell Poston, owner of Poston Manufacturing, Inc., wants to determine the cost behavior of labor and overhead. Darnell pays his workers a salary; during busy times, everyone works to get the orders out. Temps (temporary workers hired through an agency) may be hired to pack and prepare completed orders for shipment. During slower times, Darnell catches up on bookkeeping and administrative tasks while the salaried workers do preventive maintenance, clean the lines and building, etc. Temps are not hired during slow times. Darnell found that workers salaries, temp agency payments, rentals, utilities, and plant and equipment depreciation are the largest dollar accounts. He believes that workers salaries and plant and equipment depreciation are fixed, temp agency payments are associated with the number of orders (since temp workers are used to pack and prepare completed orders for shipment), and electricity is associated with the number of machine hours. When the number of different parts stored by Poston exceeds the space in the materials storeroom, Darnell rents nearby warehouse space. He can rent as much or as little space as he wants on a month-to-month basis. Therefore, he believes warehouse rental payments are variable with the number of parts purchased and stored. The account balances for the past six months as well as the six-month total are as follows: Information on number of machine hours, orders, and parts for the six-month period follows: Required: 1. Calculate the monthly average account balance for each account. Calculate the average monthly amount for each of the three drivers. 2. Calculate fixed monthly cost and the variable rates for temp agency payments, warehouse rent, and electricity. Express the results in the form of an equation for total cost. 3. In July, Darnell predicts there will be 420 orders, 250 parts, and 5,900 machine hours. What is the total labor and overhead cost for July? 4. What if Darnell buys a new machine in July for 24,000? The machine is expected to last 10 years and will have no salvage value at the end of that time. What part of the cost equation will be affected? How? What is the new expected cost in July?arrow_forwardBill Christensen, the production manager, was grumbling about the new quality cost system the plant controller wanted to put into place. If we start trying to track every bit of spoiled material, well never get any work done. Everybody knows when they ruin something. Why bother to keep track? This is a waste of time. Besides, this isnt the first time scrap reduction has been emphasized. You tell my workers to reduce scrap, and Ill guarantee it will go away, but not in the way you would like. Required: 1. Why do you suppose that the controller wants a written record of spoiled material? If everybody knows what the spoilage rate is, what benefits can come from keeping a written record? 2. Now consider Bill Christensens position. In what way(s) could he be correct? What did he mean by his remark concerning scrap reduction? Can this be avoided? Explain.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_forwardJackie Iverson was furious. She was about ready to fire Tom Rich, her purchasing agent. Just a month ago, she had given him a salary increase and a bonus for his performance. She had been especially pleased with his ability to meet or beat the price standards. But now, she found out that it was because of a huge purchase of raw materials. It would take months to use that inventory, and there was hardly space to store it. In the meantime, space had to be found for the other materials supplies that would be ordered and processed on a regular basis. Additionally, it was a lot of capital to tie up in inventorymoney that could have been used to help finance the cash needs of the new product just coming online. Her interview with Tom was frustrating. He was defensive, arguing that he thought she wanted those standards met and that the means were not that important. He also pointed out that quantity purchases were the only way to meet the price standards. Otherwise, an unfavorable variance would have been realized. Required: 1. CONCEPTUAL CONNECTION Why did Tom Rich purchase the large quantity of raw materials? Do you think that this behavior was the objective of the price standard? If not, what is the objective(s)? 2. CONCEPTUAL CONNECTION Suppose that Tom is right and that the only way to meet the price standards is through the use of quantity discounts. Also, assume that using quantity discounts is not a desirable practice for this company. What would you do to solve this dilemma? 3. CONCEPTUAL CONNECTION Should Tom be fired? Explain.arrow_forwardWhich of the following statements is true? Eliminating nonproductive processing time is particularly important in a bottleneck operation. Payment of overtime to a worker in order to relax a production constraint could increase the profits of a company. Which of the following statements is true? In a factory operating at capacity, every machine and person should be working at the maximum possible rate. One way to increase the effective utilization of a bottleneck is to reduce the number of defective units.arrow_forward
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