管理会计第九章答案——Answers for Chp 9

Q1 (9-A1)

Excel Electronics Company may have a legitimate claim against the supplier that would offset the penalty. However, the disposition of any claim is a separate issue.

The penalty of $30,000 should be charged to the purchasing department. Margie McMahon may have done everything in her power to see that the special part was delivered on time, but she is the one who is responsible for purchasing necessary material when it is needed. McMahon may not have control over her suppliers and subsequent delivery, but it is her responsibility to have the purchased parts when they are needed. She is the person in the organization who has the most influence over delivery. Everybody makes mistakes. The important point is to minimize the number of mistakes and also to understand fully that the extensive control reflected in responsibility accounting is the necessary balance to the great freedom of action that individual executives are given.

Other questions to discuss are: Did the sales department behave responsibly in accepting the order with penalty? Is it conceivable that a careful statistical study of delays by suppliers would permit the development of an "expected amount" of penalty to be incurred in a probabilistic sense, which then could be budgeted as part of the purchasing department's costs?

Discussions of this problem have again and again revealed a tendency among students (and among accountants and managers) to "fix the blame" -- as if the variances arising from a responsibility accounting system should pinpoint misbehavior and provide answers. The point is that no accounting system or variances can provide answers ipso facto. However, variances can raise questions. In this case, in deciding where the penalty should be assigned, the student might inquire who should be asked in this situation -- not who should be blamed.

Q2 (9-39)

The figure on the next page can be used as both a solution to this exercise and point of further discussion. The left-hand graph in the exercise (and the top graph below) represents the traditional view of quality costs, while the right-hand graph in the exercise (and the bottom graph below) represent the view espoused by “total-quality” guru Deming and accepted by most firms today. In both graphs, the optimal level of quality occurs at the minimum of the total cost curve.

In the TQM approach all phases of the company’s operations are incorporated in the quality program. For example, the quality of incoming materials and parts is higher. This reduces (or eliminates) appraisal costs (and associated costs), while failures that result from poor quality are also reduced. Another example of a win-win scenario is training employees to reduce errors resulting in cost savings from reduced inspection (appraisal) and internal and external failures. If the cost savings from reduced appraisal activity exceeds the training costs (prevention costs), the prevention and appraisal cost curve will shift downward, as shown in the Total Quality Management panel. As a result, the minimum of the total cost curve shifts to the right.

The minimum total cost occurs at a higher level of quality under the TQM view. Also note that the total cost of quality is lower for firms producing higher quality products or services. Deming