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 customer’s 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?
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Chapter 13 Solutions
Managerial Accounting: The Cornerstone of Business Decision-Making
- 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?arrow_forwardWayne 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 coststotaling 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 company’s quality costs were much lower—probably 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 reporting—but there never was a need to bother with any formal quality data gathering and analysis. This conference, however, had convinced him that a firm’s profitability can increase significantly by improving quality—provided the potential for improvement exists. Thus, before committing the company to a…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_forward
- In 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_forwardRecently, 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.arrow_forwardMercury, Incorporated, produces cell phones at its plant in Texas. A year ago, a consumer survey ranked the company's cell phones low in product quality. Shocked by this result, Jorge Gomez, Mercury's president, set up a task force to implement a formal quality improvement program. Included on this task force were representatives from the Engineering, Marketing, Customer Service, Production, and Accounting departments. After working together for a year, the task force prepared the quality cost report shown below: Prevention costs: Machine maintenance Training suppliers Quality circles Total prevention cost Appraisal costs: Incoming inspection Final testing Total appraisal cost Internal failure costs: Rework Scrap Total internal failure cost External failure costs: Warranty repairs Customer returns Mercury, Incorporated Quality Cost Report (in thousands) Total external failure cost Total quality cost Total production cost Prevention costs: Machine maintenance Training suppliers Quality…arrow_forward
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