Question

Imperial Jewelers manufactures and sells a gold bracelet for $410.00. The company’s accounting system says that the unit product cost for this bracelet is $258.00 as shown below:

Direct materials	$	140
Direct labor		82
Manufacturing overhead		36
Unit product cost	$	258

The members of a wedding party have approached Imperial Jewelers about buying 11 of these gold bracelets for the discounted price of $370.00 each. The members of the wedding party would like special filigree applied to the bracelets that would require Imperial Jewelers to buy a special tool for $457 and that would increase the direct materials cost per bracelet by $5. The special tool would have no other use once the special order is completed.

To analyze this special order opportunity, Imperial Jewelers has determined that most of its manufacturing overhead is fixed and unaffected by variations in how much jewelry is produced in any given period. However, $6.00 of the overhead is variable with respect to the number of bracelets produced. The company also believes that accepting this order would have no effect on its ability to produce and sell jewelry to other customers. Furthermore, the company could fulfill the wedding party’s order using its existing manufacturing capacity.

Required:

1. What is the financial advantage (disadvantage) of accepting the special order from the wedding party?

2. Should the company accept the special order?

.

Outdoor Luggage, Inc., makes high-end hard-sided luggage for sports equipment. Data concerning three of the company’s most popular models appear below.

	Ski Guard			Golf Guard			Fishing Guard
Selling price per unit	$	260		$	270		$	305
Variable cost per unit	$	130		$	130		$	180
Plastic injection molding machine processing time required to produce one unit	4 minutes			6 minutes			9 minutes
Pounds of plastic pellets per unit	9 pounds			16 pounds			7 pounds

Required:

1. If we assume that the total time available on the plastic injection molding machine is the constraint in the production process, how much contribution margin per minute of the constrained resource is earned by each product?

2. Which product offers the most profitable use of the plastic injection molding machine?

3. If we assume that a severe shortage of plastic pellets has required the company to cut back its production so much that its new constraint has become the total available pounds of plastic pellets, how much contribution margin per pound of the constrained resource is earned by each product?

4. Which product offers the most profitable use of the plastic pellets?

5. Which product has the largest contribution margin per unit?

Answer 1