1. Schmidtke's Meat Pty Ltd manufactures smoked meat products in the Barossa Valley, using processes that have been handed down from one generation of Schmidtkes to the next. Recently, one of the company's major high-volume-selling products, mettwurst, has come under intense pressure from an Adelaide manufacturer that uses modern manufacturing processes. Schmidtke's mettwurst sells for $7 per 500-gram stick, based on a cost-plus pricing system. (The company applies manufacturing overhead using a plantwide overhead rate based on the number of direct labour hours worked. Prices are based on absorption cost plus a 40 per cent markup.) The Adelaide competitor sells its mettwurst for $5.50 per 500-gram stick. The owner and manager of Schmidtke's, Hans Schmidtke, is not particularly worried about the problem, but his wife Frieda, the marketing manager, is concerned. Frieda: Hans, you are putting your head in the sand. The Adelaide mettwurst has the potential to destroy our business. All our years of work will be lost. By the time our children, Wolfgang and Heidi, finish university there will be no more Schmidtke's Meat! Where will they work? Hans: Frieda, stop worrying. The Adelaide mettwurst will disappear from the market after a while. There is no way they can be making a profit at that price. Just think about it. They're located in the city where the rates and taxes are very high. They've got all that fancy new machinery to pay for. They're playing games, trying to get a share of our market. To survive in the longer term, they'll have to increase their price. Anyway, they don't have a recipe like ours that has been in the family for years. And they don't have our reputation for quality. Heidi: Dad, I'm not sure you're right. You should taste this Adelaide mettwurst. There's no problem with their recipe or their quality. The customers know this already and that's why our mettwurst sales are down. At the university, we've been learning about a new costing system called 'activity-based costing'. I'd like to use it to work out what our problem is. Hans: I've told you, I've told your mother: we don't have a problem, or we won't in the longer term. In the meantime, if you want to waste your vacation playing around with a new costing system that we don't need, go right ahead! Heidi developed an activity-based costing system and identified the following bill of activities for the production of mettwurst:

3104AFE STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT ACCOUNTING 2 Mettwurst: Bill of Activities Annual volume: 5000 sticks Batch size: 250 sticks Activity Quantity of activity driver used Cost per unit activity driver Annual cost Inspect meat 20 inspections $30 per inspection $600 Dispose of substandard meat 500 kilograms $1 per kilogram 500 Move to mincing room 60 barrow-loads $8 per barrow 480 Load mincer* 40 loads $27 per load 1 080 Operate mincer 3000 kilograms $0.50 per kilogram 1 500 Unload mincer* 40 loads $21 per load 840 Move to mixing room 40 barrow-loads $9 per barrow 360 Load mixer* 60 loads $20 per load 1 200 Operate mixer 60 loads $40 per load 2 400 Unload mixer* 60 loads $16 per load 960 Move to packing room 60 barrow-loads $5 per barrow 300 Pack meat into skins 5000 skins $0.50 per skin 2 500 Move to smokehouse 100 trolley-loads $4 per trolley 400 Move to truck 100 trolley-loads $10 per trolley 1 000 Annual cost of all direct labour and manufacturing overhead activities $14 120 Activity cost per unit $2.824 Direct material cost per unit 2.160 Cost per unit $4.984 3104AFE STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT ACCOUNTING 3 Required:

1. Part B: Extension of the topic (Word limit 500 (250+250)) Group will choose two scholarly journal articles from Appendix 1 and analyze the topic by exploring the additional aspect/aspects, which is/are not covered in the lecture. The purpose is to extend groups' extant knowledge of the topic one-step further. The extension of knowledge should make a bridge in between Part A and B. Group is required to articulate a summary of 250 words per article coherently