...MEMORANDUM TO: Destin Brass Products Co. FROM: Brett Davis, Paul Gorski, and Sarah Wisenbarger DATE: September 17, 2015 SUBJECT: Analysis of Destin Brass Products Co. ------------------------------------------------- The purpose of this memorandum is to analyze the product costing of pumps, valves, and flow controllers at Destin Brass Products Co. Destin Brass supplies three products for high-quality brass boat fittings. Currently the most revenue is coming from the production of pumps; however, due to the fact that competitors are dropping their prices there is a concern for how to maintain the gross margin for pumps. With the adjustment in costs gross margins have dropped from the planned margin of 35% to 22% in just one month. To offset this potential damage we are taking a look at how to adjust product costs in order to stay in the competitive pump market. Below lists the product costs using activity based costing, recommendations for adjusting the price of flow controllers, and how these changes in product costing affects net income. Activity based costing allows for as many costs as possible to be directly related back to where it was used in production. Under the activity based costing the new product costs for valves, pumps, and flow controllers are $37.81, $48.82, and $100.48 respectively (see Exhibit 1). These product costs are found by adding together the direct material, direct labor, and overhead allocation for each product. Overhead allocation...
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...Destin Brass Products Co. manufactures three items: valves, pumps and flow controllers (FC's). All three items are used in water purification systems. Destin faces stiff competition in the pump market with no design advantage that would make their pumps more desirable. A meeting was held due to declining profits caused by a lower price Destin was able to charge for pumps and having budgeted pumps sales to account for 55% of company revenues. A proposal was put forth to modify how the company allocates it's overhead costs to the three items it produces. The company currently uses a standard costing method based on direct labor dollars. This method finds the standard cost per units of valves to be $37.56, pumps $63.12, and FC's $56.50. If the company were to switch to Activity-Based Costing (ABC) the cost per units for valves would be $47.17, pumps $51.64, and FC's $74.22 (Exhibit 1). This is an increase of 20.37% for valves, a decrease of 22.23% for pumps, and an increase of 35.38% for FC's. The company has also calculated unit costs separating the overhead rates for receiving and shipping of materials from other overhead costs. This revised unit cost results in an increase of 23.35% for valves from standard, a decrease of 7.07% for pumps from standard and a decrease in FC's of 17.81% from standard. The revised unit costs are still not close to the costs using the ABC method. The differences are a 3.89% decrease in valves, a 14.15% decrease in pumps and a increase of 35.38%...
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...Destin Brass Products Co. Case study Cost Issues. Vales: Several competitors could math our quality but none had tried to gain market share by cutting price and gross margins had been maintained. Pumps: Our competitors’ sales prices are below our pump-cost calculation even when our manufactural process is better. Could not figure out how competitors making profit unless being subsidized by other products. Flow Controllers: We increased price by 12.5% with no apparent effect on demand. Peggy (controller) opinions are: 1) Material and labor cost are related to products produced. 2) Competitors marking different assumption about overhead costs. 3) Currently using traditional costing system-preparing financial reports and tax returns. 4) Introduced revised cost systems. 5) Proposed Activity based costing as initiated by Scott. Since Destin is not seeing any noticeable competition in the FC market, price could easily be raised the $3 to produce the 35% profit margin budgeted for (Exhibit 3). In the valve market Destin only has one customer. To have valve unit costs produce the 35% gross profit margin, an increase in price of $10 will have to be made (Exhibit 3). This will have to be carefully considered prior to execution. With such a drastic price increase, the one customer may go elsewhere for valves. The company could also look to expand it's customer base for valves, increasing the numbers of production runs, and help increase profit margins. If Destin were to no longer...
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...Destin Brass Products Company (“Destin”) was established in 1984 when Steve Abbott had sensed an opportunity after talking with a president of a large manufacturer of water purification equipment who was dissatisfied with the quality of the brass valves available. Soon after the formation of the company, Scott and his team were able to manufacture valves that met or exceeded the needed specification enabling them to acquire a contract with the purification equipment manufacturer and enabling them to turn a profit. Destin now manufactures valves, pumps, and flow controllers, all three of which are used in water purification systems. Recently, it has become clear through their financial reports that competitors are using different strategies. Despite the fact that the competitors sell pumps at lower prices, they must still be making a profit, while Destin’s gross margin on pumps continues to decrease as they are forced to cut prices to keep up with the competition. In a meeting with Destin leadership, that was held to come up with possible suggestions to work around the issue, they realized that competitors are not taking advantage of the opportunity for profit in flow controllers. In the meeting, Destin leadership decides to look into adopting a new accounting system that would allocate the cost of each resource to the products based on direct consumption by each product. Under this new accounting system, flow controllers appear even more profitable due to the way...
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...Destin Brass Products Co. Case Analysis Required Questions Solution Click Link Below To Buy: http://hwcampus.com/shop/destin-brass-products-co-case-analysis-required-questions-solution/ Purchase and read the case study titled Destin Brass Products Co. by William J. Bruns Jr. It should cost you $3.95. There is also a supplemental spreadsheet that you should download to work from. Disregard the questions at the end of the case. You should answer the following questions: Requirement #1 – Using Activity Based Costing to determine the cost per product. a.) Use Exhibit #4 to calculate the activity rates per each activity for the material related overhead and the other overhead amounts. b.) Use the rates you calculated in part a to calculate the total overhead applied to each product. (You should use the activities in Exhibit 5. Where activity numbers have been provided use the actual activity amounts not their percentages as the case writers have rounded their percentages. For example use the number of transactions 4 + 25 + 100 = 129 transactions not 3% + 19% + 78%) c.) Don’t forget to use the Material, Set up labor, and Direct labor, costs provided for each product in Exhibit 4. Requirement #2 – Compare the cost you got for Requirement #1 to the standard cost in Exhibit #3 and the Revised Unit Cost in Exhibit #4. What is causing the different costs per product between the three different costing methods? a.) Put all three costs on one spreadsheet so you...
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...Destin Brass Products Co. Case Analysis Required Questions Solution Click Link Below To Buy: http://hwcampus.com/shop/destin-brass-products-co-case-analysis-required-questions-solution/ Purchase and read the case study titled Destin Brass Products Co. by William J. Bruns Jr. It should cost you $3.95. There is also a supplemental spreadsheet that you should download to work from. Disregard the questions at the end of the case. You should answer the following questions: Requirement #1 – Using Activity Based Costing to determine the cost per product. a.) Use Exhibit #4 to calculate the activity rates per each activity for the material related overhead and the other overhead amounts. b.) Use the rates you calculated in part a to calculate the total overhead applied to each product. (You should use the activities in Exhibit 5. Where activity numbers have been provided use the actual activity amounts not their percentages as the case writers have rounded their percentages. For example use the number of transactions 4 + 25 + 100 = 129 transactions not 3% + 19% + 78%) c.) Don’t forget to use the Material, Set up labor, and Direct labor, costs provided for each product in Exhibit 4. Requirement #2 – Compare the cost you got for Requirement #1 to the standard cost in Exhibit #3 and the Revised Unit Cost in Exhibit #4. What is causing the different costs per product between the three different costing methods? a.) Put all three costs on one spreadsheet so you...
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...School 5-191-029 Rev. April 27, 1993 Destin Brass Products Co. ost Teaching Note Substantive Issues Raised The managers of Destin Brass Products a y or P re struggling to understand the relationship between their costs and prices for each of the three products produced and sold by Destin. One of the products, pumps, is coming under increasingly competitive price pressure. As a result, Destin has been unable to maintain its desired profit margin. At the same time, Destin has been able to raise prices on another product, flow controllers, apparently with no effect on demand and no increase in competition from other manufacturers. As a result of these situations, management is increasingly questioning whether it knows the true manufacturing costs of its products. At the time of the case, Destin was using a conventional cost accounting system in which all overhead was allocated to product based on direct labor dollars. The controller had already recommended to the company president that they might consider a more modern cost accounting system with a somewhat more-refined allocation system, using material cost and machine hours to allocate overhead related to material receiving and handling. A third possible system in which overhead would be allocated based on transactions (an activity-based costing system, or ABC system) is described in the case by the manufacturing manager in such a way that the costs of products under that system can be estimated and...
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...Destin Brass Production Company Contents Executive Summary ...................................................................................................................... 2 Problem Statement ....................................................................................................................... 2 Key Decision Criteria .................................................................................................................... 3 Alternatives Analysis ..................................................................................................................... 3 Recommendations ........................................................................................................................ 4 Action and Implementation Plan ................................................................................................... 5 Outcome Measure Specification ................................................................................................... 7 Textbook Questions ...................................................................................................................... 7 Appendix ....................................................................................................................................... 9 Exhibit 1. Net income in traditional and ABC systems. .................................................................. 12 Exhibit 2. Cost per unit based on ABC method .............................
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...Introduction Destin Brass Products Co. is a Florida based manufacturing company specializing in brass components that are used in fluid distribution systems within the water purification industry. They operate one manufacturing facility and focus on the machine and assembly steps of three products: valves, pumps and flow controllers. Recently, Destin has been facing increasing price competition on their line of pumps which is causing them to continually reduce prices resulting in lower margins. The inverse is happening in the market for flow controllers as there is no direct competition allowing for price increases. Although competition exists for their third product, valves, there has been no downward price pressure so the pricing and margins have remained stable. Problem Statement In trying to determine how competitors have been able to continually lower their pricing for pumps, Destin has taken a closer look at the cost accounting for their product lines, specifically how overhead costs are allocated to the products. Their current cost account system is a traditional system which allocates overhead cost on the bases of production-run labor cost. Although Destin has a narrow range of products they are now at the point where they need more specific information on actual products costs to better determine pricing and profitability. The overhead and support costs need to be split in a more granular way and traced to the specific products in order to more accurately understand...
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...Hannah Guthy Destin Brass Products Co. Case Write-up 1. Use the Overhead Cost Activity Analysis in Exhibit 5 and other data on manufacturing costs to estimate product costs for valves, pumps, and flow controllers. | Total | Valves | Pumps | Flow Controllers | Manufacturing Costs: | | | | | Material Cost/Unit | | $16 | $20 | $22 | Units/Month | | 7,500 | 12,500 | 4,000 | Material Cost/Month | | $120,000 | $250,000 | $88,000 | Labor Costs: | | | | | Production Runs/Month | | 1 run | 5 runs | 10 runs | Set-up Labor Hours/Prod. Run | | 8 hrs | 8 hrs | 12 hrs | Run Labor Hours/Unit | | .25 hrs | .50 hrs | .40 hrs | | | | | | Set-up Labor Hours/Month | | 8 hrs(1 run*8 hrs) | 40 hrs(5 runs*8 hrs) | 120 hrs(10 runs*12 hrs) | Run Labor Hours/Month | | 1,875 hrs(7,500 units*.25 hrs) | 6,250 hrs(12,500 units*.5 hrs) | 1,600 hrs(4,000 units*.4 hrs) | Labor Cost/Hour | $16 | | | | Set-up Cost/Month | | $128($16*8 hrs) | $640($16*40 hrs) | $1,920($16*120 hrs) | Run Labor Cost/Month | | $30,000($16*1,875 hrs) | $100,000($16*6,250 hrs) | $25,600($16*1,600 hrs) | Machine Usage Costs: | | | | | Machine Usage Hours/Unit | | .5 hrs | .5 hrs | .2 hrs | Machine Usage Hours/Month | 10,800 hrs | 3,750 hrs | 6250 hrs | 800 hrs | Machining Usage Cost/Month | $25 (machine depreciation/hr) | $93,750(3750 hrs*$25) | $156,250(6,250 hrs*$25) | $20,000(800 hrs*$25)...
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...Destin Brass Products Destin Brass produces three products used for water purification systems: valves, pumps and flow controllers. They are seeing high competition in the pumps market while competitors are reducing the prices on pumps. Because they do not have any design advantages to their product, they feel they need to follow the market and lower their prices as well. A meeting was held to discuss the declining profits and a proposal to change their overhead allocation method was proposed. 1.) Use the Overhead Cost Activity Analysis in Exhibit 5 and other data on manufacturing costs to estimate product costs for values, pumps and flow controllers. Based on the information in the case, the cost of valves is $39, the cost of pumps is $81 and the costs of flow controllers is $147. The breakdown of the analysis is below. Total Values Pumps Flow Controllers Manufacturing Costs Material Cost per Unit 16 20 22 Units per Month 7500 12500 4000 Material Cost per Month 120000 250000 88000 Labor Costs Production runs per month 1 5 10 Setup Labor Hours per Production Run 8 8 12 Run Labor Hours per Unit 0.25 0.5 0.4 Setup Labor Hours per Month 8 40 120 Run Labor Hours per Month 1875 6250 1600 Labor Costs per Hour 16 Setup Cost per Month 128 640 1920 Run Labor Cost per Month 30000 500000 256000 Machine Usage Costs Machine Usage Hours per Unit 0.5 0.5 0.2 Machine Usage Hours per Month 10800 3750 6250 800 Machine...
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... Terra O’Brien Destin Brass Products Company is concerned with its level of competition and their product costing system. Peggy has discussed some of the issues facing the company with Roland and John. The following are overhead activities and the cost drivers associated with them: Overhead Activities | Cost Driver | Machine depreciation | Increases with the amount of machine usage | Setup labor | Increase with the amount of setup hours. | Receiving | Increases with the amount of shipments received | Materials handling | Increases when products are produced and shipped | Engineering | Increases with amount of products produced | Packing and shipping | Increase with amounts of products sent out | Maintenance | Increases with the amount of machine hours used | After recalculating the costs with regards to the level of activity required by each product line, it was found that the prices charged for each product may not be appropriately aligned with the amount of resources required for each one. Specifically, valves and pumps are somewhat overpriced, flow controllers are underpriced. This discrepancy in pricing is due to how overhead is allocated to each product line in the different methods. It is clear from Exhibit 5 that flow controllers consume greater than 50% of the resources per month, with the exception of machine time (7%). However under the Standard Unit Cost and Revised Standard Cost methods, the other two product lines are actually subsidizing...
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...Case #15 Destin Brass Products Co Harvard Business School Case #9-190-089 (Rev. April 24, 1997) Questions 1. Explain how costs are estimated in the three cost systems delineated in the case: (a) The traditional cost system, (b) the modified cost system, and (c) the activity based costing (ABC) system. How do you determine which cost system is better suited for a given company? The traditional cost accounting system in Destin is built on measurements of direct and direct costs and on assumptions about its production and sales activity. Each unit of product is charged for material cost and labor cost; material cost is based on the prices it pays for components , and labor cost is based on the standard times for run labor times the labor pay rate of $16 per hour. Overhead cost is assigned to products in two-stage process. First, the overhead costs are assigned to production- in Destin case it has only one production department so they are sure all overhead costs are assigned correctly at the first stage. Then, the total overhead costs assigned to production are allocated on the basis of production-run labor cost. Every $1.00 of run labor cost causes $4.39 of overhead to be allocated to the product to which the labor was applied. The modified cost system would be to forego the overhead cost allocation altogether. Overhead costs could be charged each month as period expenses. Product profitability would then be measured at the contribution margin level, or price less all...
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...Component & Fabrication Plant 1. The official overhead allocation rate used in the 1987 model year strategy study at the Automotive Component and Fabrication Plant (ACF) was 435% of direct labor cost. Calculate the overhead allocation rate using the 1987 model year budget. Why do you get different numbers? 2. Calculate the overhead allocation rate for each of the model years 1988 through 1990. Are the changes since 1987 in overhead allocation rates significant? Why have these changes occurred? 3. Consider two products in the same product line: Product 1 Product 2 Expected Selling Price $62 $54 Standard Material Cost 16 27 Standard Labor Cost 6 3 Calculate the expected gross margins as a percentage of selling price on each product based on the 1988 and 1990 model year budgets, assuming selling price remains constant and material/labor costs do not change from standard. 4. Are the product costs reported by the cost system appropriate for use in the strategic analysis? 5. Assume that the selling prices, volumes, and material costs for the 1991 model year will not change for fuel tanks and doors produced by the ACF of Bridgeton Industries. Assume also that if manifolds are produced, their selling prices, volume, and material costs...
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...Jessica Turner has a master's degree in accounting and an undergrad degree in business. She established Turner Test Prep, a CPA exam review center, after being rejected by the Big Six accounting firms. She decided to bring the company into existence when she was searching for other employment options, and also because she had experience in the field when she worked at a review center's business office before taking up her master's degree. There, she inadvertently started teaching the math portion of the reviews, and received training in teaching. After passing the CPA exam on the first try herself, she decided that she would like to help those who want to take the CPA exam pass on their first try as well. And so she developed a business and marketing plan, convened with various professors to create a comprehensive curriculum, and opened her firm's doors. Instead of the normal review route of using books, software, or online courses, she provided a full service 6 week, 3-6 hours a day review regimen for her clients that include one hour live lectures from various professors, discussions about test taking skills and organizational skills to digest information faster, provided audiotapes that the clients can listen to at home or in their cars, executed timed mini tests as well as practice essay questions, one on one bi weekly client meeting to see how they've progressed and for them to ask questions, and a direct line to her via e mail for any queries the clients may have. She Even...
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