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		Costs	Activity Drivers
Receiving	$	600,000	Direct material cost
Manufacturing		5,500,000	Machine-hours
Machine setup		900,000	Production runs
Shipping		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.

	Products
	Standard			Deluxe
Total direct material costs	$	225,000		$	175,000
Total direct labor costs	$	650,000		$	290,000
Total machine-hours		142,000			108,000
Total number of setups		95			105
Total pounds of material		16,000			11,000
Total direct labor-hours		6,200			3,950
Number of units produced and shipped		16,000			9,000

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?

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 $4,158,000 and the costs attributed to engineering are $1,944,000. 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?

Receiving		% of material dollars
Production		per machine-hour
Engineering		per setup
Machine setup		per setup
Shipping		per unit

	Standard	Deluxe
Direct Costs
Overhead:
Receiving
Production
Engineering
Machine setup
Shipping
Total costs
Number of units
Unit cost