Exercise 10-6 Managing a Constrained Resource [LO10-6]

Portsmouth Company makes upholstered furniture. Its only variable cost is direct materials. The demand for the company's products far exceeds its manufacturing capacity. The bottleneck (or constriant) in the production process is upholstery labor-hours. Information concerning three of Portsmouth's upholstered chairs appears below:

	Recliner	Sofa	Love Seat
Selling price per unit	$ 1,280	$ 2,180	$ 1,360
Variable cost per unit	$ 700	$ 1,400	$ 1,000
Upholstery labor-hours per unit	10 hours	13 hours	4 hours

Required:

1.

Portsmouth is considering paying its upholstery laborers additional compensation to work overtime. Assuming that this extra time would be used to produce sofas, up to how much of an overtime premium per hour should the company be willing to pay to keep the upholstery shop open after normal working hours?

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Maximum amount payable per hour

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2.

A small nearby upholstering company has offered to upholster furniture for Portsmouth at a price of $45 per hour. The management of Portsmouth is confident that this upholstering companys work is high quality and their craftsmen can work as quickly as Portsmouths own craftsmen on the simpler upholstering jobs such as the Love Seat. How much additional contribution margin per hour can Portsmouth earn if it provides the raw materials to the nearby company and then hires it to upholster the Love Seats? Yes or no?