In recent years, slow response times and frequent repairs have plagued Jetson Engineering's computer system. The cause was a substantial increase in computer-aided design work that pushed the system beyond its intended capacity. Bob Wilson, the production manager, decided that a new computer should be acquired to absorb some of the additional work. Surprisingly, six months after installing the new computer, he noticed that many of the engineers continued to use the old computer system, even though the new system had excess capacity and several features that simplified programming. Bob discussed the situation with the supervisors of the entity's six design teams. They explained that the finance director's office allocates the cost of each computer to their work, based on the number of hours they use the computer. One responded, 'Look, the old computer didn't cost much and it's highly utilised - even the accounting department uses that machine. When the cost per hour of use is calculated, it's very low. 'The new machine, on the other hand, costs a lot of money, and in the first couple of months we didn't use it much because it takes time to learn a new system. I was shocked when I saw how high my charges were for using the new machine. Because the cost is high and use is low, the cost per hour charged to my work was incredible. I'll tell you something: next month we'll probably use the new computer even less. Our job performance doesn't look very good when our jobs cost a fortune to complete because of huge allocations of computer cost.'' What a mess,' Bob sighed. 'Even though the new computer is bought and paid for and has plenty of capacity, the engineers aren't using it. Don't they realise that most of the computer costs are fixed costs? Using the new computer for 200 hours a month doesn't really cost the company much more than using it for 20 hours a month.'
Required:
Recommend a change in the allocation system at Jetson Engineering that will change the behaviour of the design teams.