1. Cain Components manufactures and distributes various plumbing products used in homes and other buildings. Over time, the production staff has noticed that products they considered easy to make were difficult to sell at margins considered reasonable, while products that seemed to take a lot of staff time were selling well despite recent price increases. A summer intern has suggested that the cost system might be providing misleading information. The controller decided that a good summer project for the intern would be to develop, in one self-contained area of the plant, an alternative cost system with which to compare the current system. The intern identified the following cost pools and, after discussion with some plant personnel, appropriate cost drivers for each pool. There were: Cost Pools Receiving Manufacturing Machine setup Shipping Costs Activity Drivers $ 600,000 Direct material cost 5,500,000 Machine-hours 900,000 Production runs 1,000,000 Units shipped In this particular area, Cain produces two of its many products: Standard and Deluxe. The following are data for production for the latest full year of operations. Total direct material costs $ Products Standard Deluxe 245,00 155,00 $ 0 0 650,00.250,00 0 0 150,00 100,00 0 0 Total direct labor costs $ $ Total machine-hours Total number of setups 75 125 Total pounds of material 18,000 9,000 Total direct labor-hours 6,000 3,750 Number of units produced and shipped 20,000 5,000 W Required: a. The current cost accounting system charges overhead to products based on machine-hours. What unit product costs will be reported for the two products if the current cost system continues to be used? b. The intern suggests an ABC system using the cost drivers identified above. What unit product costs will be reported for the two products if the ABC system is used? 2. The intern decides to look more closely at the manufacturing activity and determines that it can be broken down into two activities: production and engineering. Production covers the costs of ongoing manufacturing while engineering includes those activities dealing with engineering changes, design modifications, and so on. The costs attributed to production are $3,300,000 and the costs attributed to engineering are $2,200,000. After discussion with plant engineers the intern decides that the best cost driver for engineering is setups, because most of the work arises from changes in the way the product is run. Required: a-1. Compute the totals of the cost driver rates shown below. a-2. What unit product costs will be reported for the two products if the revised ABC system is used
