Fiske Corporation manufactures a popular regional brand of kitchen utensils. The design and variety have been fairly constant over the last three years. The managers at Fiske are planning for some changes in the product line next year, but first they want to understand better the relation between activity and factory costs as experienced with the current products. Discussions with the plant supervisor suggest that overhead seems to vary with labor-hours, machine-hours, or both. The following data were collected from the last three years of operations:

Quarter	Machine-Hours	Labor-Hours	Factory costs
1	18,850	14,905	$ 3,388,671
2	18,590	15,477	3,425,136
3	17,480	16,720	3,617,144
4	19,240	15,983	3,573,240
5	21,280	17,501	3,812,284
6	19,630	17,369	3,777,312
7	19,240	15,290	3,531,726
8	18,850	14,366	3,369,102
9	18,460	15,994	3,512,487
10	20,670	16,995	3,730,734
11	17,550	14,278	3,253,815
12	18,460	18,244	3,723,786

Required:

1. Use the high-low method to estimate the fixed and variable portions of factory costs based on machine-hours.
2. Managers expect the plant to operate at 22,500 machine-hours next quarter. Assuming the relationship remains the same with the new product line, what are the estimated quarterly factory costs?

• Required A

Use the high-low method to estimate the fixed and variable portions of factory costs based on machine-hours.

Note: Round "Variable cost" answer to 2 decimal places. If you get a slightly different result for fixed cost between high and low calculations due to the rounding, go with the larger number.

Variable cost (per machine-hour)
Fixed cost

• Required B

Managers expect the plant to operate at 22,500 machine-hours next quarter. Assuming the relationship remains the same with the new product line, what are the estimated quarterly factory costs?

Note: Round "Variable cost" to 2 decimal places.

	Estimated quarterly factory costs