Soap Makers International

Several years ago, Ingrid Krause wanted some international expertise and applied for a transfer to her company’s soap division, which is located south of Warsaw, Poland. The soap division manufactures hand soap for use in a large number of settings, from hospitals to luxury hotels. Ingrid was awarded the transfer to the soap division and was assigned to the accounting department. She is responsible for overseeing the costing and probability analysis of the various soaps and soap-making processes. During her tenure in the soap division, there were numerous changes in the number of soaps manufactured and the processes to make the different soaps. Consequently, Ingrid’s position required her to consider changes in the accounting processes to reflect the changes in the soap division’s business.

For several decades, the company’s soap-making process required a large labour force that manufactured and packaged the soap mainly by hand. Local economic changes meant that the labour force that the factory required was not as available as it had been in the past. As a result, the division was experiencing slower processing time, and more snap being rejected during inspections because of quality concerns. To address the issues related to the lack of labour availability, the division’s management decided three years ago that automation was the way to go. Consequently, over the last three years, the soap making processes have changed with the implementation of automation.

The automation of the soap making processes have allowed for a much larger variety of soap and packing, a reduced direct labour force and direct labour costs, and a higher level of traceability of costs to the various soaps because of technological improvements. Soaps made for industrial applications require different ingredients, less time in processing, less time in finishing, and less time in and cheaper packaging than do soaps for the hotel industry. The costs of materials and packaging are directly traceable to the various types of soaps through new software that uses bar codes and counters to trace material costs to the various soaps directly.

Ingrid feels that the current costing system should be revisited. The cost driver for allocation of the overhead costs (such as supervisory salaries and plant utilities) have always been direct labour hours cost. However, given the decline in the use of labour due to automation, Ingrid is questioning its suitability as a basis of allocation. Ingrid would like to explore activity based costing to allocate overhead costs.

Ingrid has gathered cost data for two representative soaps: one sold to hospitals and one sold to hotels. Further, Ingrid has gathered data from the automated system on the amount of time each type of soap spends in the three manufacturing processes: processing, finishing, and packaging. The soap is produced in large batches, consequently, the data are adjusted to reflect the average cost per 100g of soap. The data for type of soap for one month’s production are in Exhibit 1.

REQUIRED

Prepare a report for Ingrid Krause that addresses her interest in exploring an activity-based costing (ABC) system while including the following:

1. Is Ingrid’s expectation of changing her cost allocation of overhead from a traditional approach (one cost driver for allocation) to an ABC approach (multiple cost drivers applied to multiple cost pools) justifiable? If so, explain to her why it is.
2. Calculate the costs (of direct material, direct labour, and overhead) for each of the two representative types of soap using direct labour as the basis for the allocation of overhead.
3. Calculate the costs (of direct material, direct labour, and overhead) for each of the two representative types of soap using and ABC approach for the allocation of manufacturing costs.
4. Do the cost allocation calculations provide support for an ABC approach? Explain.
5. Would you advise Ingrid Krause to continue with her traditional costing approach or change to an ABC approach? Explain.

EXHIBIT 1 – COSTS FOR ONE MONTH’S PRODUCTION OF SOAP

EXHIBIT 2 – TIME REQUIRED FOR ONE MONTH’S PRODUCTION OF SOAP

For each of the scenarios below, choose the strategy that you believe should be pursued to achieve the best results, and provide a brief explanation of why you believe this is the best strategy.

5 Generic Strategies

Low-Cost Provider Strategy

Broad Differentiation Strategy

Focused Low-Cost Strategy

Focused Differentiation Strategy

Best-Cost Provider Strategy

Scenarios:

1. A new waterfront development project is beginning in a medium-size city. This project will include moderate to higher-end shopping, restaurants, and hotels. Some of these businesses include: Pottery Barn, Ann Taylor,an Apple Store, Sasha’s Dress Boutique, Apostrophe, Bose, Calvin Klein, Cheesecake Factory, Capital Grille,Maggiano’s, the Marriott, and the Westin. The spaces will include a mixture of national chains, and local businesses. The project and the city have been highlighted in national papers for the expected success of the project and renewed attraction to the city. The Sully Hospitality group is determining if they want to open a boutique hotel in this area. What strategy should Sully adopt to develop the type of boutique hotel would best- fit this project? Provide a brief explanation.

2. A new shopping center is being developed – the main anchors are Wal-Mart and Home Depot. The other parcels will include smaller establishments of fast-food and other convenience category businesses.McDonald’s is interested in this project but has to determine how they would approach this location. The options are:

Put a McDonald’s Express inside the Wal-Mart

Purchase an out-parcel at the front of the project with high traffic volume and build a traditional

McDonald’s

Purchase an out-parcel at the front of the project with high traffic volume and build a McCafe

Which generic strategy should be McDonald’s use to guide this decision? Based on the generic strategy that you believe is most appropriate for this scenario, which option should McDonald’s choose? Provide a brief explanation.

3. The airline industry has seen various players attempt all of the generic strategies. Given the current state of the airline industry and the main surviving airlines, if a company wanted to get into this industry right now, which strategy would promote the best chances for success? Provide a brief explanation.

4. The top five selling brands of tablets in the world are: 5. Acer, 4. Dell, 3. Sony Vaio, 2. Lenovo, and 1. Apple. A new start-up company wants to break into the tablet market; what generic strategy should they adopt? Provide a brief explanation.

Please review the following case information and determine what the population residual plot means. The residual is already calculated but I need to know what role in plays in this case analysis for the regression analysis. Thanks in advance!

In this case, Armand's Pizza Parlors is a chain of Italian-food restaurants located in five-state area. Their most sucessful locations are the ones near college campuses. The null hypothesis is that the managers believe that quarterly sales for these restaurants (y) are related positively to the size of the student population (x). Thus, the restaurants that are near college campuses with a larger student population tend to generate more sales than the restuarants near campuses with a small student population. The alternative hypothesis is that the restaurants near college campuses with a larger student population do not generate more sales than the restaurants near college campuses with a smaller student population.

A student wonders if tall women tend to date taller men than do short women. She measures herself, her dormitory roommate, and the women in the adjoining rooms; then she measures the next man each woman dates. The data (heights in inches) are listed below. Women (x) 67 65 69 63 68 67 Men (y) 71 67 69 67 68 66

(a) Make a scatterplot of these data. (Do this on paper. Your instructor may ask you to turn this in.) Based on the scatterplot, do you expect the correlation to be positive or negative? Near ± 1 or not?

The correlation should be positive. It should be near 1.

The correlation should be negative. It should be near -1.

The correlation should be positive. It should not be near 1.

The correlation should be negative. It should not be near -1.

(b) Find the correlation r between the heights of the men and women. (Round your answer to three decimal places.)

(c) How would r change if all the men were 6 inches shorter than the heights given in the table? Does the correlation tell us whether women tend to date men taller than themselves?

r will not change. This correlation does imply that women tend to date men taller than themselves

. r will increase. This correlation does not imply that women tend to date men taller than themselves.

r will not change. This correlation does not imply that women tend to date men taller than themselves.

r will decrease. This correlation does imply that women tend to date men taller than themselves.

(d) If heights were measured in centimeters rather than inches, how would the correlation change? (There are 2.54 centimeters in an inch.)

r will decrease by 2.54. r will be divided by 2.54.

r will increase by 2.54.

r will not change.

r will be multiplied by 2.54.

(e) If every woman dated a man exactly 3 inches taller than herself, what would be the correlation between male and female heights?

r will be equal to -1.

r will be equal to 1.

r will be the same as the value in (b).

r will be equal to 0.

1. Kolyesna Hotels Group acquired some financial data for the years 2010 and 2011

Using the financial data table, calculate the required ratios for the Kolyesna Hotel Group in 2011 (assume there are 365 days in a year).
a) Profit margin ratio

b) Return on assets (ROA)

c) Return on equity (ROE)

d) Earnings per share (EPS) with common stock

e) Earnings per share (EPS) with preferred stock

f) Price/Earnings ratio (P/E) for both common and preferred stock

2. The return on asset (ROA) and profit margin ratio for Tiggie’s Quick Food Corp. were 11.25% and 24.80% in 2013. If the total asset value of this firm was $25 million at the end of 2013, what is the total revenue generated in 2013?

3. Jamming Luxury Lodging Properties has obtained the financial data as follows:

Based on the financial information given, calculate return on owner’s equity (ROE) for Jamming Luxury Lodging Properties in 2010.

4. The financial data for Millen & Adams Boutique Hotel Inc. in both 2011 and 2012 are as follows:

Based on the financial data table, calculate the earnings per share (EPS) with preferred stock for Millen & Adams Boutique Hotel Inc. in 2012.

20. 1 – Create a webpage that contains a table with exactly three rows and two columns.

1. The first row will contain a table heading containing the name of a US National Park, that spans across all columns. Hint: use the colspan attribute inside the opening th tag
2. Give the table heading an onmouseover that will change the text of the heading when it is moused over to read My Favorites Park! (Hint: use innerHTML). Use onmouseout to change it back.
3. The second and third rows will contain 2 thumbnail(small) images each. (See Creating Square Thumbnails section below).

• These are images from the National Park that you selected
• Remember your code, pages, images will not be like anyone else’s. When they are compared you do not want your file to be flagged.

4. Use the anchor element on the thumbnail images, so that each thumbnail image opens a larger version of the same image in a new tab. (Hint: if you give the target a name, you can have them all open in the same tab rather than using _blank and having a new tab open each time one is clicked. This avoids opening too many tabs.)
5. Apply style to the table. Again, your table will not be like anyone else’s. Your work is to be your own work.
6. Write the JavaScript code so that each thumbnail image in the table opens the larger original image in the large cell in row four/five of the table when the thumbnail is clicked.
   1. E.g., clicking on dog_small.png should cause dog.png to open in the large cell of the table as a 300px by 300px image replacing the image that was previously there.
   2. Note: Write a function to replace the large image with the new image.
   3. Hint: The onclick will just call the function.

(1) a. sentence generation

The sentence you need to generate is shown below:

Sentence: John fed a bear in the park.

In this question, you should start from the target structure, a sentence (= S). Then you expand S by applying the rule S --> S PP. There is another rule that can expand S, namely S --> NP VP. However, if you apply S --> NP VP before S --> S PP, you will not be able to include PP. Therefore, S --> S PP is the correct rule to apply first, as has been given in the table below (together with two other steps). Remember to insert the lexical items when you get to a leaf node like D or N where no rule can be further applied. If your answers are correct, then all the 14 blanks should be filled.

The rules and lexicon that you need to generate the sentence are given as below:

Rules:

S --> NP VP
NP --> D NP
VP --> V PP
VP --> V NP
S --> S PP
PP --> P NP
AdjP --> Adv Adj
NP --> N
CP --> C S
Lexicon:

V --> saw, kicked, fed

P --> in, at

D --> a, the

N --> John, bear, park

You will need only a subset of the rules for this question.

Step

Sentence generating process

0 S

1 S --> S PP

2 S --> NP VP

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

Done!

(1)   b. Expand the rules and lexicon

What do you need to add to the previous rules and lexicon if you want to generate the following sentence:

The boy saw a brown bear in the park.

New rule(s) that needs to be added:

____________________

New lexical item(s) that needs to be added:
_____________________
______________________

Cash management is routine, day-to-day administration of cash and near-cash resources by an individual or family. With this in mind, develop a cash management strategy that incorporates a variety of savings plans

Write the first three non-zero terms of the Taylor series of sin x near x0 = 3π/2. Sketch a plot of the curves for sin x and your approximation.

Which international trade theory would best apply and why does BMW (Germany Company) have a production plant near Greenville SC that employs nearly 9000.