St Mary’s University

School of Graduate Studies, MBA

Group Assignment (30%)

Submission date: February 25, 202

 

Course: Accounting and Finance for Managers

Group Assignment 2

1. The following data belong to a company for a period.

• Materials used $80,000 (60% for DM)
• Labor used   400,000(50% for DL)
• FOH cost (others)    40,000 (Heat, Light, Power)

Instruction: Compute:

1. Prime cost
2. Total FOH cost
3. Conversion cost
4. Production cost (mfg)
5. Direct cost
6. Indirect cost
7. AXY Company produces two products, the ABB and the ACC. The ABB is a high-volume item totaling 50,000 units annually. The ACC is a low-volume item totaling only 10,000 units per year. Each product requires 4 hour of direct labor for completion. Therefore, total annual direct labor hours are 240,000. Expected annual manufacturing overhead costs are $1,600,000. The cost allocation base is direct labor hour. The direct materials cost per unit is $80 for the ABB and $60 for the ACC. The direct labor cost is $24 per unit for each product.

AXY Company’s expected annual overhead costs of $1,600,000 relate to two activities—machine setups, machining.

Activity	Cost Driver				Total expected overhead cost	Total expected use of driver
Machine setup	Number of setup				$600,000	3000
Machining	Machine hours				1,000,000	100,000
Cost Driver		ABB	ACC
Number of setup		1000	2000
Machine hours		60,000	40,000

Required:

1. Allocate overhead cost in traditional costing system and ABC costing system.
2. Determine unit cost under traditional costing and ABC costing system and comment on it.

3. A Bike manufacturer manufactures gear shifters used in one of its products.The unit product cost of this part is:

Variable cost	$19
Depreciation of special equipment	2
Allocated general overhead	4
Unit product cos	$25

 

The special equipment has resale value of $20,000.The total amount of general overhead, which is allocated on the basis of direct labor hours, would be unaffected by this decision.The $25 unit product cost is based on 10,000 parts produced each year.An outside supplier has offered to provide the 10,000 parts at a cost of $20 per part.
Required:Should we accept the supplier’s offer? Why/why not?

4. Data related to the expected sales of a Products for ABC Inc. for the current year is follows:

Products        Unit Selling Price       Unit Variable Cos

Automobile    ETB 200,000                             ETB 160,000

 

The estimated fixed costs for the current year are ETB 20,000,000.

Instructions:

1. Determine the estimated units of sales of the product necessary to reach the break-even point for the current year.
2. Assume the company targets income before tax ETB 4,000,000. Calculate total units to be sold to achieve target profit.

 

 

Length: Maximum 2,500 words

Feedback mode: 

Formative feedback is provided throughout the semester in your class workshops/tutorials. Your workshop leader will work with you providing you with real-time feedback based on the work that you share with her/him. If you come prepared to your workshops then your workshop leader will have more opportunity to provide you with formative feedback.

Summative feedback will be provided in the marking rubric. We will provide comments in each cell of the marking rubric and in the general comments section at the end. We aim to provide feedback that is:

• Specific – that is, the feedback will relate to the work that you have completed
• Informative – that is, the feedback will help you to understand the level of achievement that you attained
• Directive – that is, the feedback will give you strategies, ideas and a direction for further improvement

Assessment Declaration:

I declare that in submitting all work for this assessment I have read, understood and agree to the content and expectations of the Assessment declaration. (Links to an external site.)

Learning Objectives Assessed:

This assignment assesses Learning Objectives 3 and 6.

• Develop applied skills to conduct industry and company research involving critically analysing and synthesising business information.
• Communicate business data through research analysis and report writing.

Possible Report Template

You may use this template if it helps you organise your thoughts as you respond to the writing prompt below.  You should ask your local lecturer how to harmonise their advice with this template if you decide to use it.

Details: 

Purpose of the assignment:  

This assignment is designed to get you to think more deeply about Part 2 of how you might solve the overall management challenge and why your chosen approach could be the “best way.”  Whereas your goal in A1 (Part 1) was to analyse what the FFCRC does as an R&D organisation, the goal of A2 (Part 2) is to analyse a particular energy product created by Engie Energy Resources (listed below).  In A3 (Part 3), you will bring what you have learned in A1 and A2 together to design a business model / roadmap for FFCRC to present to Engie Energy Resources about how they could work together to commercialise that product.

Overall management challenge: The FFCRC, as an R&D organisation, helps energy businesses design solutions to technical & management problems.  In this instance, the FFCRC is trying to help Engie Energy Resources design a business plan (roadmap) to commercialise the technical products they have created at the REIDS-SPORE Demonstration project. Details about the demonstration project are in the videos found HERE:

• Multi-fuel microgrid (green electricity) = wind turbine (Links to an external site.), solar energy (Links to an external site.) panels, hydrogen fuel, (Links to an external site.) and hydrogen battery storage

• Mobility products = hydrogen fueled electric vehicle (Links to an external site.) + hydrogen recharging station

• Sustainable data centre = efficient, green power use towards running cloud computing platforms (Links to an external site.)

• District cooling (Links to an external site.) = working with Singapore based JTC

Information on what hydrogen is and how it is made can be found HERE (Links to an external site.).

For A2, pick only one of these products. Concentrate on building a business case for how it can be used commercially across a range of businesses within one business sector.

Problem:  Your task in this assignment is simply to imagine how this one product might be used and how it could be marketed to various end users both in Singapore (Links to an external site.) and within the ASEAN (Links to an external site.) region.  Consider macro, meso and micro implications as you make the case for the use of this product.  Rather than going broad and general, pick one business sector on which to focus (e.g., banking / finance, automobile production, real estate, e-commerce, etc.)  You may wish to ask the following questions:

• How would the uptake of a ‘green energy’ product help businesses in this sector achieve low emissions goals?
• Why should they strive to achieve these goals?
• What are the financial implications?
• Think about how soft and hard processes (e.g., leadership/culture, ethics/CSR, and/or HRM) would be affected (both +/-) by companies making the choice to purchase and use one of these green energy products?
• How would the use of green energy products help end users achieve their own strategic sustainability goals or contribute to a regional decarbonisation strategy?

Requirements for the assignment:    

• Re-state the problem as a research question
• Undertake a literature review of management literature on energy / sustainability challenges within the business sector you chose.  This review will help you to better understand the nature of the problem, how theory can inform a solution and what (if anything) has been tried before to solve this kind of problem (e.g. Has this kind of challenge occurred before? Maybe in another industry? How has it been solved?)
• Identify and select appropriate scholarly tools, models and theories that will help you to understand the implications the use of this product will have on hard and soft systems within companies in your chosen business sector (e.g., leadership, CSR, ethics, HR, etc.)
  • What kind of leadership and subsequent cultures need to be formed when making the change to use this product? Why and How?
  • Are there ethical aspects we have to consider with internal and external stakeholders?  Why and How?
  • What overall alignment is required between HRM, leadership/culture, and ethics to make sure they all say the same thing when communicating with and motivating employees to support the use of this product?
• The substance of your report is to justify why this product should be adopted by your chosen business sector – remember to use management theory and logic – make sure to support your case with evidence.
• Appendix: Write a 250-word response to the feedback you received in your first assignment and how that feedback informed your approach to structuring this assignment (this response does not apply towards your total word count).

Other useful information:

• You have to cite in text and in the reference list, whenever you borrow somebody’s idea.
• Students at RMIT are recommended to follow the RMIT-Harvard referencing style (link below).

https://www.rmit.edu.au/library/study/referencing (Links to an external site.)

• Please refer to RMIT guide  (reports/learning lab) for a report format.

https://emedia.rmit.edu.au/learninglab/content/reports-0

• You should be able to overwrite your assignment multiple times, if necessary.

Magrino specifies 4-5 pages single-spaced for the Sales Letter (excluding the references). I’m translating that into a wordcount of 2000 words for the final draft.

Format: Times New Roman or similar serif font; one-inch margins; single-spacing.

Work with eight or more sources, quoting (briefly) from most to all of them. At least five sources in the final draft should be scholarly. Include all (and only) these sources in a separate reference section at the end of the letter (on a separate page)

Remember to give page numbers when quoting and to supply the DOI for digital resources wherever available (some older ones may lack a DOI but expect recent sources have one). Use APA style for all references and in-text citations.

For additional details on the assignment, please consult Magrino, chapter 5, starting on p. 157.

Notes on the Sales Letter

1. There should not be a section in the SL with the heading INTRODUCTION. You have an unlabeled “introductory” paragraph (the first paragraph that you worked on last week). Having a subsequent section labeled “Introduction” will confuse the reader.

2. Similarly, since you should have several short sections devoted to the problem, having a section called just THE PROBLEM could be misleading or confusing (as I think it is in the first sample SL in Magrino).

You could have a section called THE GLOBAL PROBLEM indicating that you will then narrow your focus in subsequent sections. Depending on your project, you might have one section on the affected population or you might have two sections on two different affected populations. Or you might combine population with location and other factors of the problem into a single section, following this with a section on causes of the problem (etc.).

Descriptive titles are best: TWO MAIN CAUSES OF X, THE EFFECT OF X ON POPULATION Y.

3. Try to avoid single-paragraph sections. Some sections will be short but try to have two or more paragraphs in most of your sections (but it’s not the end of the world if you have some single-paragraph sections).

4. Keep your paragraphs relatively compact. Break up longer paragraphs into shorter, more focused units.  Generally, shorter paragraphs will be more appealing to read and easier to follow, encouraging your patron to attend to your letter.

If paragraphs get to be too long, remember some of the good writing guidelines from expos:

(1) one idea (main point) per paragraph
(2) start each paragraph with a topic sentence that makes the main point of the paragraph clear to your reader from the start
(3) use transitional language to guide your reader between paragraphs by showing how each new paragraph or section relates to the preceding paragraph or section

Notes on Paradigm Research

1. For the final draft of the letter (and ideally for the RD as well), I strongly recommended that you have at least four sources for the paradigm that you are working with (more than four would be better) and that at least three of these sources for the paradigm are scholarly — or at least of high quality and written by an expert in the relevant area.

2. Remember that not all the sources used in your discussion of the paradigm will necessarily support your approach in a direct way.

For example, you may present some of the models, methods, or theories as unsuccessfulalternatives that your approach, or your chosen paradigm, will surpass. That said, most sources for the paradigm should be supporting your approach.

Recall how Gawande contrasts the merely short-term success of the use of oral rehydration for cholera in West Bengal in 1971 with the success of the BRAC oral rehydration campaign in 1980. Gawande uses the failure of the former example to achieve a lasting change in the world to clarify the value of the latter example as a model of success for his project (one of achieving a lasting change).

3. A successful paradigm will often adapt models from one context to the context of the current project. Again, we see this in Gawande. His focus is infant hypothermia, not cholera. But the method by which the BRAC project promoted oral rehydration (making it a norm of treatment in West Bengal and beyond) serves as a model for the way Gawande wants to promote kangaroo care (making it a norm of infant care in Uttar Pradesh and beyond).

4. In presenting your paradigm research, work to show the connections between your sources. Does a second source add additional information to what you gain from a first source? Does it challenge or contradict what you gain from the first source? Does it clarify an ambiguity or fill a gap in what the first source offers? Does it offer a second perspective on what the first source claims? Does it provide background or a context for the first source? Does it correct an error in the first source? Does it suggest an alternative or novel application of a method described by the first source?