...The GM manufacturing plant in Fredericksburg, VA had a long history of over-engineered and inefficient processes. More importantly, the plant had a long and predictable history of failing to meet its operating budget and, as a cost center for GM, demonstrated a significant lack of ability to influence revenue in order to meet its budget. The relatively small size of the plant and its position downstream from other GM manufacturing segments made it prone to “ripple effects” of strikes in other larger plants further up the production stream – most notably the plant in Dayton, OH. A March 1997 strike at the Dayton plant resulted in no customer orders for Fredericksburg. Since timely delivery of components was critical to the overall success of GM’s entire transmission manufacturing operations, the Fredericksburg plant, a strike at another plant like Dayton was a catch-22 for Fredericksburg. No customer orders meant untimely delivery of components to other plants in the production chain thusly rendering a negative effect on overall production and GM’s ability to meet demand. The rural, small town setting of the Fredericksburg plant gave rise to unique issues concerning its workforce. Many of the employees were related and a union leader might find himself working alongside Process Manager Mother-in-law. While there may be some morale benefits to family working together, there are also some sinister downsides. The case study indicates that employees were lax about properly documenting...
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...Chapter 8 1 2 3 Strategy and the Master Budget 1 Teaching Notes for Cases 8-1: Emerson Electric Company Background • Emerson is an $8 billion company. • Its successful strategy is efficient, quality, and low cost production. R&D does not get a great deal of attention from top management. Planning Process • Top management sets sales growth and return on total capital targets for the divisions. • Each fiscal year, from November to July, the CEO and several corporate officers meet with the management of each division at a one or two day division planning conference: ▪ Prior to its division planning conference, the division president submits four standard exhibits to top management: 1. Value measurement chart 2. Sales gap chart 3. Sales gap line chart 4. 5-back-by-5-forward P&L • The division president and appropriate division staff then meet with top management to present a detailed forecast for the coming year based on the result from the division planning conference and conduct a financial review of the current year’s actual performance versus forecast: ▪ Contingency plans for several lower levels of activity also developed to protect profitability at lower sales levels. ▪ However, changes to the division’s forecast are not likely unless significant changes occurred in the environment or in the underlying assumptions. Changes in the forecast must...
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...Strategy and the Master udget After studying this chapter, you should be able to ... LO 10-1 Describe the role of budgets in the overall management process LO 10-2 Discuss the importance of strategy and its role in the master budgeting process LO 10-3 Outline the budgeting process LO 10-4 Prepare a master budget and explain the interrelationships among its supporting schedules LO 10-5 Deal with uncertainty in the budgeting process LO 10-6 Identify unique characteristics of budgeting for service companies LO 10-7 Understand alternative approaches to budgeting (viz., zero-base, activity-based, time-driven activity-based, and kaizen budgeting} LO 10-8 Discuss various behavioral considerations in budgeting If you don't know where you're going, you'll end up somewhere else. A Yogi Berra Johnson & Johnson (J&J), one of the largest manufacturers of health care products in the world, started (in 1887) as a small manufacturer of health and well-being-related products. Today, it has more than 118,000 employees and more than 250 operating companies in 60 countries. J&J sells its products in more than 175 countries. Surveys conducted over the years by Business Week, Forbes, Fortune, and other business journals repeatedly rank J&J as one of the most innovative and well-managed firms in the world. How does J&J do it? It relies on a comprehensive formal planning, budgeting, and control system in formulating and implementing strategy, coordinating and monitoring operations...
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...Prices: It helps the management in fixing selling prices of products or services by providing detailed cost information. 5. Helps in Inventory Control: It helps in inventory by using various techniques such as ABC analysis, Economic Order Quantity, Stock levels, Perpetual Inventory system and Continuous Stock Taking, Inventory Turnover Ratio etc. 6. Helps in Cost reduction: It helps in the introduction of cost reduction programme and finding out new and improved method to reduce costs. 7. Helps in measurements of Efficiency: It helps in measurements of efficiency of operations through establishment of standards and variance analysis. 8. Helps in preparation of Budgets: It helps in the preparation of various budgets such as Sales Budget, Production Budget, Purchase Budget, Man-Power Budget, Overheads budget. 9. Helps in identifying Unprofitable Activities: It helps in identifying unprofitable activities so that the necessary...
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...Discussion Budget, Savings, etc., what are the definitions of these terms? According to an article entitled “Financial Literacy to Everyone” at www.practicalmoneyskills.com, budgeting is plan for your future income and expenditures that you can use as a guideline for spending and saving. Budget came from the old French word “bougette” which means purse. It is practically, a plan and list of all planned expenses and revenue. It is a plan for borrowing, saving, and spending. So why Budget? An average student spends his allowance for books, student housing, tuition fee, and food. These are all expenses encountered not only by students but, in general, most of the people in the world. There are generally three types of expenses usually faced by students, the Academic, Living, and Personal Expenditures or Costs. Academic Costs are usually what eats up the total budget of students. It contains the different expenses that are required in able to carry out a student’s academic life. It varies from tuition fees until the very miniscule expenses utilized for photocopying hand-outs from your professor. Living Costs, on the other hand, are expenses that a student need for day to day living however, indirectly related to academics. These include your expenses in utilities (e.g. electricity, water, and internet bills), personal care expenses (shampoo, soap, etc.), and clothing and food expenses. Lastly, Personal Costs are expenditures that are unique yet still a part of a student’s budget. This...
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...of soap has been fixed at $3.00. The company is in the midst of preparing its budget for 2008 and has furnished the following information. Sales esti mates (in bars of soap): January 120,000 February 150,000 March 100,000 April 120,000 May 140,000 Inventory policy: Closing inventory for finished goods is equal to 20% of next month sales estimates. production requirement. This policy has been maintained since the time the company started its soap production. Required: Prepare the following budgets for the 1st quarter ending March 2008: i) Sales budget ii) Production budget iii) Direct Material Purchase budget (monthly breakdown is not required for this part) Note: Round your answer to the nearest unit or dollar. (3 + 4 + 4 = 11 mar ks) Solution i) Sales budget for the quarter ending March 2008 (3 marks) Month January February March Total Estimated Sales units 120,000 150,000 100,000 370,000 Selling Price per unit $3 $3 $3 Sales Revenue ($) 360,000 450,000 300,000 1,110,000 ii) Production budget for the quarter ending March 2008 (4 marks) Particulars / Month Sales estimates (+) Closing inventory requirement Total requirement (-) Opening inventory Production requirement January 120,000 30,000 150,000 24,000 126,000 February 150,000 20,000 170,000 30,000 140,000 March 100,000 24,000 124,000 20,000 104,000 Total 370,000 24,000 394,000 24,000 370,000 iii) Direct Material Purchases budget for the quarter ending March 2008 (in total) Production requirement for the quarter...
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...Cost Accounting Tabitha Smith ACC 310 Christine Errico January 12, 2011 Cost Accounting What is cost accounting? Cost accounting as referred to as managerial accounting is a system of accounting used specifically by managers (Lanen, Anderson, & Maher, 2011, p. 6). Cost accounting measures, records and reports information about costs to help managers to form a well informed decisions for an organization (Lanen, Anderson, & Maher, 2011, p. 6). Cost accounting methods and their use, budgets including discipline, construction, and elements, and variance analysis are important aspects of cost accounting as a whole, which is an important tool for a successful organization. The main goal of cost accounting is to help managers to maximize value within their organization (Lanen, Anderson, & Maher, 2011, p. 3). One of the fundamental services of cost accounting is to provide information to the manager to guide them to make effective valuable decisions (Lanen, Anderson, & Maher, 2011, p. 3). An essential objective of cost accounting is to create an effective value chain (Lanen, Anderson, & Maher, 2011, p. 4). A value chain is a set of activities in which raw materials are converted into goods and services for consumers to purchase (Lanen, Anderson, & Maher, 2011, p. 4). An organization is responsible to coordinate with their vendors and suppliers along with their distributors and customers to accomplish their objective (Lanen, Anderson...
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...The Vershire Company has to keep tight controls over their plants, budgets, and performance in terms of efficiency and effectiveness, because customers can easily purchase from another manufacturer if cost, quality, and service are not met. The planning strength of the Vershire Company is that a sales budget is formulated at the corporate level and starts with a forecast, which is created and sent to the divisional managers for review. This allows divisional managers to have some input for their budget, which will add to the accuracy. Corporate controllers also visit each plant for additional input before final submission. The company I work also formulates a sales budget; we are actually starting the process in October. We look at our historical sales data, our current sales, and our sales targets for the coming year. The sales budget leads to the development of the other budgets, manufacturing, production, purchasing, inventories, sales and other expenses. Our budgets are usually determined by end of November, no later than mid December for the New Year. All departments have input and are responsible for their budgets. Our forecasting and planning efforts are examined on a monthly basis throughout the year as well as daily inputs from the sales quotation department through their quote follow-up efforts. This allows us to keep tighter controls on inventories to keep us within the set budget as well as keep reasonable lead times for the different product lines. The weakness...
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...considerable autonomy in decision-making. Under a general manager were two line managers responsible for production and marketing functions. Over the years, the Aluminum Can Division had built plants scattered throughout the country. Each plant is responsible to serve a geographical area, both for large and small-scale customers. The industry is very competitive, as each manufacturer employs the same technology and everyone was viewed by customers to have the same product quality as anyone in the industry. Thus, customers can readily shift from one supplier to another in cases that delivery schedulesand product qualities were not met. Vershire employs a long-term budgetary control system. Corporate sales budgets are prepared both in a top-down and bottom-up approach. These sales budgets are then translated to sales target per production plants and became the basis of target profits for each plant. Upon the end of the period, managers are then evaluated based on these target profits, even when budgeted sales are not met. Also, other performance measures are at place that is inconsistent and do not derived meaningful results. Although Vershire has been successful especially in the Aluminum Can division, the changing environment and industry conditions may result to necessary changes to company policies and procedures. Problem Statement How can Vershire maintain its profitability and current position in the industry? How can the company delegate...
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...construction of $2,100,000 and $780,000 for plant equipment. At this point it would appear that with a proposed budget limit of $2,750,000 set by the company’s Board of Directors that we are on target with an estimated total budget of $2,633,532 for the Huntsville Plant Project. As you can see we don’t have very much room (budgetary) for any missteps therefore, it will be necessary for very member of the team monitor and control individual budgets and areas of responsibility. Within the Huntsville project is divided into key project phases and probably the most important phase to ensure the success of the entire project is the planning phase. There a few critical deliverables that must be completed within the ten weeks set aside for planning. Just to point out a few key “must happens” such as; procure the plant’s worksite, obtain all needed permits and approvals and the selection of an general contractor not to say we can relax or slack on any part of the project’s tight budget and schedules, again the planning phase is only ten weeks with a budget of only $285,754 the project’s first test. After the planning phase is the preparation phase were the project is really defined and it is critical to the success of the project that the entire team stay focus on their assigned tasks and the big picture, completion of the Huntsville project on budget and on schedule. We have a budget of $1,822,442 and 47 weeks to prepare the worksite and complete building the new plant. If, we are to...
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...the influx of machine cut furniture, the market for his product has been reduced over the years. The company must decide soon to keep things as they are, or spend the money needed to buy the appropriate machinery to produce the high quality products they desire. Although the machinery will be expensive from the start, they would eventually pay for themselves over time on the amount of labor saved. There has also seemed to be a lack of budgets and performance reports in the decision-making process. The company could use these reports in many areas to keep the company making profit, as well as shift the company in the proper direction for the future. One thing that can be taken away from the current data is that the company produced over budget on its mid-grade products, while failing to meet the budget on the high-end products. If there was a proper understanding of the demand for their products, money could have been saved on inventory and overhead while shifting focus to the mid-grade products that consistently produced above budget. The company needs to shift their focus on being a distribution chain for other manufactures while focusing on their profit potential for their current...
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...Analysis of Case Study Christopher Rubio Week 4 HCS/483 When ever an organization is thinking of implementing a New It Initiative they must ensure that they are well organized and fully understand the length and time a project may take. According to Cook “ Project failure occurs when a project is significantly over budget, takes must longer than estimated timeline, or has to be terminated because of so many problems have occurred that proceeding is no longer judged to be viable.” With Memorial Health System failed implementation of a CPOE system they had many problems including an over budgeted project, Lack of belief in project, Insufficient leadership support, Failure to respect uncertainty, Failure to anticipate short-term disruptions, and initiative undernourishment. In this paper we will discuss all six of these problems along with give possible solutions to each of them. Failure to respect uncertainty: When the system was finally implemented it was had a lot of bugs in the system. They implemented the system at all of facilities. Because of this as well as a few other issues such as lack of training the system was taken offline and they continued with the old system. The solution to this problem would have been to implement the system in one location instead of the entire hospital. This place can be used as the test facility in which you can do two things. One you can work all the bugs out and the other would be to use it as a training facility where you can send...
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...FINANCIAL TECHNIQUES USED IN THIS STUDY Budget and budgeting techniques In order to properly plan and set goals, several different budgets must be created. This article discusses some of the more common budgets used by businesses. SALES BUDGET: The sales budget is an estimate of future sales. It is used to create company sales goals. PRODUCTION BUDGET: Product oriented companies create a production budget. It is an estimate of the number of units that must be manufactured in order to meet the sales goals. The production budget also estimates the various costs involved with manufacturing those units, such as labour, material, and other expenses. CASH FLOW BUDGET: The cash flow budget is a prediction of future cash receipts and expenditures for a particular period. It usually covers a period in the short-term future. The cash flow budget helps the business determine when income will be sufficient to cover expenses and when the company will need to seek outside financing. MARKETING BUDGET: The marketing budget is an estimate of the funds needed for promotion, advertising, and public relations in order to market the product or service. PROJECT BUDGET: The project budget is a prediction of the costs associated with a particular company project. These costs include labour, materials, and other related expenses. The project budget is often broken down into specific tasks, with task budgets assigned to each. CAPITAL BUDGET: The capital budget is a prediction of company needs in regard...
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...to the entire company. The budget is their plan for success. According to Noreen, Brewer, and Garrison (2011) it is a quantitative plan for acquiring and using resources over a specified time period. The budget process can seem like a tedious exercise for some, as it involves and affects all areas of the company, but in the end it enables a company to plan how it will achieve revenue goals and control costs. In the simplest of terms the budget explains how much the company should be spending to produce a predetermined about amount of product which will yield a desired profit. Through the budgeting process and the controlling of costs many company’s like American Airlines, are able to keep their costs at a minimum and profits as high as possible. A company’s master budget is actually made up of a collection of smaller budgets that detail the company’s sales, production and financial goals. These smaller budgets consist of a sales budget, a production budget or an inventory of merchandise purchases budget, a direct materials budget, a direct labor budget, a manufacturing overhead budget, an ending finished goods inventory budget, a selling and administrative expense budget, and a cash budget. The information obtained from these budgets come together to make up the budgeted income statement and the budgeted balance sheet. The sales budget shows the expected sales for the period. Noreen et all (2011) tells us that an accurate sales budget is the key to the entire budgeting...
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...Supply Budget Cranston INF 336 Project Procurement Management (BQ01208A) Instructor: Kurt Earnhart 9/21/2012 A wide-ranging budget is serious to organizational success. However, the importance of the material supply budget cannot be overlooked. Established after the predicting of supply needs and resourcing has been completed, the supply budget defines how the business can meet its upcoming goals and targets and do so in cost-efficient and cost-effective ways. Separated into 4 distinct budgets, the materials, MRO, Capital and administrative/operating budget, the supply budget offers the business the means to meet its goals and objectives. * The Materials (operations) purchase budget, is based on the group’s forecasted operations, sales and plans classifies cash flow labels and problems well in advance. Because of this task, the materials (operations) purchase budget separates problems and gives the organization ways to avoid predicament. * The MRO Budget, which normally covers a purchase plan over 12 month periods, outlines budgetary provisions for maintenance, repair and operating supplies. Due to the intricacy of the MRO budget and the line items it contains, the MRO budget is really thought-provoking. For clear reasons, it might be impossible to forecast some repairs. * The Capital Budget fine points the money outflows based on the strategic plans of product lines and production needs. Because of this, some companies may plan the wealth outflows for one...
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