Marble, Inc. manufactures a product that is available in both a flexible and a rigid model.The company has made the rigid model for years; the flexible model was introduced several years ago to tap a new segment of the market.Since introduction of the flexible model, the company's profits have steadily declined, and management has become concerned about the accuracy of its costing system.Sales of the flexible model have been increasing rapidly.

Overhead is applied to products on the basis of direct labor-hours.At the beginning of the current year, management estimated that $600,000 in overhead costs would be incurred and the company would produce and sell 1,000 units of the flexible model and 10,000 units of the regular model.The flexible model requires 2 hours of direct labor time per unit, and the regular model requires 1 hour.Direct materials and labor costs per unit are given below:

FlexibleRigid

Direct materials cost per unit............$110.00$80.00

Direct labor cost per unit................. $30.00$15.00

Required:

1. Compute the predetermined overhead rate using direct labor-hours as the basis for allocating overhead costs to products.Compute the unit product cost for one unit of each model.
2. An intern suggested that the company use activity-based costing to cost its products.A team was formed to investigate this idea.It came back with the recommendation that four activity cost pools be used.These cost pools and their associated activities are listed as follows:

EstimatedExpected Activity

Activity Cost Pool and Activity MeasureOverhead CostFlexibleRigidTotal

Purchase orders (number of orders).........$20,000100300400

Rework requests (number of requests)......10,00060140 200

Product testing (number of tests)............ 210,0009001,200 2,100

Machine related (machine-hours)............ 360,0001,5002,500 4,000

$600,000

Compute the activity rate for each of the activity cost pools.

3.Using activity-based costing, do the following:

• Determine the total amount of overhead that would be assigned to each model for the year.
• Compute the unit product cost for one unit of each model.

4.Identify a possible explanation for the company's declining profit based on an analysis of your results from requirements 1-3.