Case study: Activity-based management
Instructional Case—Activity-based
Costing Incorporating both Activity and
Product Costing
J. GREGORY BUSHONG�, JOHN C. TALBOTT�� and DAVID W. CORNELL†
�Florida Atlantic University, USA, ��Wright State University, USA,
†University of Missouri-Kansas City, USA
Received: October 2006
Revised: June 2007
Accepted: November 2007
ABSTRACT In recent years, accounting educators have responded to pressure from various stakeholders to improve the skills of accounting graduates. The skills demanded by these constituencies are consistent and include analytical thinking, problem-solving, and communication skills. The purpose of this paper is to describe our approach to addressing these issues in our undergraduate cost/managerial accounting classes by supplementing textbooks with an activity-based costing (ABC) case. The case is unstructured and students are required to prepare both first and second stage allocations, interpret the information, and suggest how management can use the information. An unstructured problem is an ideal setting for activity- based costing because of the difficulties in its implementation. In particular, this case illustrates one of the difficulties encountered in implementing ABC, which occurs when companies collect costs in the general ledger in the traditional functional manner instead of by major production activity.
KEY WORDS: Activity-based cost, instructional case, management accounting
In recent years, accounting educators have responded to pressure from various stake-
holders to improve the skills of accounting graduates. The skills demanded by these con-
stituencies are consistent and include analytical thinking, problem-solving, and
communication skills (Albrecht and Sack, 2000; AICPA, 1999; and AECC, 1990). The
purpose of this paper is to describe our approach to addressing some of these issues by
supplementing cost/managerial accounting textbooks with an activity-based costing (ABC) case. We use this case in undergraduate upper-division cost/managerial account- ing classes to help our students develop the skills demanded by employers. Students are
required to prepare both first and second stage allocations, interpret the information,
Accounting Education: an international journal
Vol. 17, No. 4, 385 – 403, December 2008
Correspondence address: J. Gregory Bushong, Barry Kaye College of Business, Florida Atlantic University, Port
Saint Lucie, FL 34986, USA. Email: gbushong@fau.edu
0963-9284 Print/1468-4489 Online/08/040385 – 19 # 2008 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/09639280802436632
and suggest how management can use the information. We minimize the mechanical
aspects by providing students with guidelines for their preparation. Students must interpret
the results of the allocation process and suggest how management may use the information
to enhance operational performance. The case illustrates the difficulties encountered in
implementing ABC when companies collect costs in the general ledger in the traditional
functional manner.
We have organized the paper into three sections. The first section provides a review of
the literature as it pertains to revising accounting curricula and to ABC. The second
section presents and discusses the case. The final section presents a Teaching Note
related to the case.
Literature Review
The literature relating to both ABC and the need for reforms in accounting education is
large. This indicates the importance of both of these topics. We separate the literature
review supporting the use of an ABC case to develop the skills demanded by accounting
employers into two components. The first component discusses the skills required by
employers, while the second reviews the ABC literature.
Skills Required to Become Professional Accountants
Critics complain that accounting curricula are rule-based and demand rote memorization
from students, as opposed to educating them (Adams, Pryor and Adams, 1994; Inman,
Wenzler and Wickert, 1989; Schultz, 1989; and Zeff, 1989). Nearon (2002, p. 32) suggests
accounting education even fails to demand rote memorization since ‘almost all students
must take a CPA exam preparatory course upon graduation and even then most candidates
do not pass all four parts of the exam on the first try.’ These criticisms are consistent with
the findings of the Accounting Education Change Commission (AECC, 1990), which
identified two overriding objectives of accounting education. The first objective relates
to the content of the accounting curriculum and the second objective to the delivery of
that content. The content of the accounting curriculum must create a base for life-long
learning, and teaching methods must teach students how to learn on their own. Students
must be active participants in the learning process to meet these objectives. Additionally,
they must possess the skills, knowledge, and professional orientation required for life-long
learning. The AECC defines the intellectual skills as including ‘the ability to locate,
obtain, and organize information and the ability to identify and solve unstructured
problems in unfamiliar settings and to exercise judgment based on comprehension of an
unfocused set of facts.’ Part of their description of knowledge states that the ‘focus
should be on developing analytical and conceptual thinking, not on memorizing
professional standards’ (AECC, 1990, pp. 307 – 309).
In essence, the AECC is suggesting that accounting curricula should move students to
the higher levels of Bloom’s (1956) taxonomy of learning objectives. Some accounting
departments have referenced Bloom’s taxonomy while restructuring their program in
response to the work of the AECC (Ainsworth and Plumlee, 1993). Additionally, instruc-
tors have supplemented textbooks with outside assignments in order to encourage students
to achieve at higher levels of Bloom’s taxonomy (Cornell and Bushong, 2005; and Christ,
2002). We have a similar objective while focusing on cost accounting in general and ABC
in particular.
386 J. G. Bushong et al.
Instructional Case—Activity-based Costing
There have been many innovations in cost accounting, but ABC has received widespread
attention in the management accounting literature. In fact, a query on the Business Source
Primer research database generates in excess of 1000 references. The literature on ABC is
vast because its promise is enticing. Cooper and Kaplan (1991, Chapter 5) argue that ABC
provides the cost data needed to make improved decisions regarding pricing, product mix,
process improvement, and other key operational factors. Other promises include lower
costs, improved quality, and reduced manufacturing cycle time (e.g. Anderson and
Young, 1999; and Ostrenga, Ozan, McIlhattan and Harwood, 1992).
Accounting academicians and accounting professionals have both contributed to this
body of literature. The latter tends to focus on anecdotal implementations of ABC. For
instance, Mackie (2006) discusses the challenges and benefits of merging Grenzplankos-
tenrechnung (GPK) and ABC in a hospital environment. GPK is a marginal costing system
that focuses on a cost-pull approach. It begins with outputs based on customer demand,
which drives costs. GPK establishes cost centres and evaluates their efficiency based on
the difference between standard and actual costs. He finds many challenges to the
implementation, including a vast amount of redefining data items and associating them
with activities, and reassigning 600 employees to different cost centres. However, he
finds many advantages, including simplicity and operational management buy-in,
improved understanding of complex operational areas, and higher quality of information
for decision-making. This is typical of the anecdotal contributions made by professionals
implementing ABC.
Academicians, however, do not tend to focus on specific implementations of ABC,
preferring instead to focus on aggregating and analyzing data relating to it. One strand
of academic ABC research has focused on attributes resulting in the successful implemen-
tation of ABC. Baird, Harrison and Reeve (2007) examine the success of ABC, in addition
to other forms of activity management, and the organizational and cultural factors affect-
ing their success. The results of their survey of Australian business units indicate that
activity management is moderately successful, with greater use associated with higher
levels of success. Success was associated with both organizational and cultural factors.
Organizational factors include support from top management and link to quality, while
cultural factors include outcome orientation and attention to detail.
Simply defining success of implementing ABC is difficult, however. Shields (1995,
p. 153) states ‘Providing a definition of (ABC success) was problematic as the literature
is vague about what constitutes success, and discussions with ABC experts during con-
struction of the survey did not result in consensus about a tangible definition.’ Shields
decides to let the survey respondent determine ‘whatever definition he or she deemed rel-
evant’ (1995, p. 154). McGowan and Klammer (1997) use a single-item scale representing
participants’ satisfaction with ABC. Foster and Swenson (1997) use two approaches to
determining the success of ABC. The first approach, which they refer to as an a priori
classification approach, looks at its use in decision-making; actions taken with ABC infor-
mation; dollar improvements; and management’s evaluation of the overall success. The
second approach uses factor analysis. They find that the alternative measures of success
influence the explanatory power of ABC success determinant studies.
Another strand of academic research has focused on problems with collecting the data to
implement ABC. Kaplan and Anderson (2007) discuss the fact that ABC has been difficult
to implement on a large scale because of the data collection technique. In particular, the
surveys used by companies to provide the ABC estimates are too time-consuming and
expensive. Additionally, the surveys have a negative effect on the morale of the employees
Instructional Case—Activity-based Costing 387
completing them. They suggest the use of time-driven activity-based costing (TDABC) as
an easier tool for estimating resource demands.
Ittner, Lanen and Larcker (2002) look at the performance of the ABC adopters versus
non-adopters. They claim that little evidence exists supporting the use of ABC, and that
prior research has focused on perceptions of success only. Their analysis of a large
sample of manufacturing plants finds ‘modest evidence that ABC is positively associated
with manufacturing performance.’ (2002, p. 712) This includes higher quality levels,
decreased cycle time, and increased first pass quality. They find however that ABC
does not have a significant association with return on assets.
Similar to Ittner et al. (2002), not all of the research supports the use of ABC. Noreen
(1991) demonstrates that ABC only provides relevant costs for decision-making if the
cost function assumptions embedded in ABC are accurate. These assumptions include
cost functions that are linear and separable. Datar and Gupta (1994) show that increasing
the number of cost pools in ABC systems can actually increase errors in cost measurement.
Additionally, improving the specification of cost allocation bases can have a similar effect.
Banker and Potter (1993), Christensen and Demski (1997), and Bromwich and Hong
(1999) show that the benefits of ABC vary with competitive markets, input markets,
and the organizations’ underlying technology. The conclusion of these studies is that
ABC systems are only preferred under specialized conditions.
To summarize, ABC promises to hold many benefits for organizations that implement
it. Certain constraints and a difficult implementation, however, may preclude the realiz-
ation of those benefits. Therefore, it provides an ideal setting in which to challenge stu-
dents to move up Bloom’s taxonomy of learning objectives, thereby meeting some of
the goals of the AECC. When formatted correctly in a case, it represents an unstructured
and difficult problem. For instance, the determination of the activities and the assignment
of costs to those activities can prove to be problematical (Bruesewitz and Talbott, 1997,
and Chaffman and Talbott, 1991). Also, while current cost/managerial accounting text- books discuss first and second stage allocation in their coverage of ABC, many assume
that companies either do or can collect cost data by major production activity. For
example, Cost Accounting, 12th (Horngren, Datar and Foster, 2006) and Cost Manage-
ment: Accounting and Control, 5th (Hansen and Mowen 2006), present few end-of-
chapter problems that require costing activities from the general ledger. We use our
case as a supplement to the textbook in an attempt to both introduce the complexities
of ABC and to challenge our students to achieve higher levels of learning.
The case requires the students to prepare both first and second stage allocations, inter-
pret the information, and suggest how management can use the information. We minimize
the mechanical aspects of the process by providing students with guidelines for their prep-
aration. The students must interpret the information and suggest how management may
use the information to enhance operational performance after completing the allocations.
In addition to developing some of the skills the AECC identifies, the case illustrates the
difficulties encountered in implementing ABC when companies collect costs in the
general ledger in the traditional functional manner. Other advantages of the case, shown
in Exhibit 1, include the following.
1. The case illustrates problems in identifying primary activities used for collecting costs.
Although we do not require that students identify the primary activities, we discuss the
problems that the manufacturing manager and the management accountant encounter
in identifying those activities.
2. The case compares traditional cost systems to activity-based accounting, and illustrates
how different methods of cost allocation affect the cost per unit.
388 J. G. Bushong et al.
3. The case illustrates how different assumptions about cost drivers and allocation rates
can affect the cost per unit.
4. The case requires that students interpret and use information from an activity-based
costing study.
5. The case illustrates how product costs affect other accounting and business problems.
6. The case allows the introduction of complexity and its associated costs into the class-
room discussion.
Exhibit 1. Instructional case background
Lisa Holton, the production manager of Consumer Brands, 1
had just returned from her
favourite fast food restaurant, and she was not pleased. The proliferation of the product
lines, thought Lisa, was reminiscent of her own company. If I wanted to eat lasagne or
corn on the cob, mused Lisa, I would go somewhere else. It must have taken
15 minutes to serve the lasagne to the person in front of me, and then he said they had
burned the lasagne. By increasing complexity in the menu, thought Lisa, the restaurant
was undoubtedly hurting quality, uniformity, and speed.
Lisa then picked up the evening newspaper and turned to the business page where she
was greeted by an article on Procter & Gamble Co. (P&G) and programs the company had
designed to save P&G $2 billion (Harrington, 1996). From using 17 different specifica-
tions for a common detergent in dishwashing liquids, P&G cut to a single specification
with savings of over $20 million. The company also streamlined the chemicals it used
for laundry and cleaning products, which created another $50 million in savings, and
P&G was eliminating separate packages for boys and girls in its Pampers Brand.
What really caught Lisa’s attention in the newspaper article, however, was the number
of items in a given brand line-up had been reduced 30% since 1990, and P&G executives
desired to reduce it another 25%. Head & Shoulders shampoo, for example, had gone from
26 items in its North America line to 15. Cover Girl and Max Factor were also experien-
cing tremendous product simplification. Just the opposite of what we have been doing,
thought Lisa.
The manager of our marketing department should have been with me tonight at the res-
taurant or at least should read this newspaper article, thought Lisa. Over the strenuous
objection of some of the production personnel, who argued that the setup costs were astro-
nomical, Consumer Brands had introduced a Tiny Bar (1.5 oz) of soap last year to comp-
lement the Little (3.0 oz) and Big bars (5.0 oz). Sales had been disastrous.
The next week Lisa called a soap team meeting to examine the costs associated with the
three sizes of soap. Joe Johnson, the accountant assigned to the soap team, proposed that
Consumer Brands consider concentrating its resources on Tiny and Big and reducing or
eliminating the output of Little in light of the unit cost data. ‘Here is some information
to examine,’ Joe declared as his PowerPoint presentation revealed the information
shown in Tables 1 and 2. ‘As you can see, our costs are less than the industry average
and our main competitor for both Tiny and Big.’
Lisa Holton looked intently at the labour and overhead costs of the three bars of soap.
‘I’m certainly not an accountant,’ she said, ‘but it does not appear plausible to allocate the
total labour cost based on direct labour hours. Thirty-five of our 125 employees are man-
agers. Furthermore, I have seen the way the remaining employees categorize their time,
and it is not realistic. The labour hours certainly do not capture set-up costs. In addition,
it appears arbitrary to allocate the remaining $4,295,000 based on volume.’
Joe Johnson suggested that Consumer Brands perform an activity-based costing (ABC)
study to determine the manufacturing costs of the three products. Since many team
members were not familiar with ABC, Johnson explained that when companies use
Instructional Case—Activity-based Costing 389
ABC they associate costs with activities required to produce the products instead of
allocating the costs directly to products. Once they determine the costs of activities,
they use the activities required to produce each product to allocate the costs to the individ-
ual products. After gaining a basic understanding of ABC, the team members agreed that
Johnson should examine other ways to allocate production costs to the three products.
Johnson previously worked at Navistar International Corporation, a manufacturer of
auto bodies and large trucks, and had extensive experience with product proliferation
problems and concomitant complexity and costs. Navistar produced 20 different truck
models at its Springfield, Ohio facility. In addition, Navistar offered customers numerous
Table 1. Consumer brands annual budgeted labour and overhead costs
Annual costs
Labour (including benefits):
90 production employees $5,400,000
35 management employees 2,625,000
Total labour $8,025,000
Depreciation 975,000
Administrative overhead:
Purchasing 420,000
Cost accounting 400,000
Buildings 480,000
Administration 750,000
Total administrative overhead 2,050,000
Taxes and insurance 350,000
Engineering and research and development 1,000,000
Utilities 695,000
Other 200,000
Total production costs $13,295,000
Table 2. Consumer brands labour and overhead cost allocation – traditional costing
Tiny Little Big Total
Costs:
Labour (allocated by direct labour hours) $301,692 $5,752,256 $1,971,053 $8,025,000
Depreciation (allocated by machine hours) 24,158 676,412 274,430 975,000
All other costs (allocated by volume) 84,216 2,947,549 1,263,235 4,295,000
Total cost $410,065 $9,376,217 $3,508,718 $13,295,000
Cost per bar $0.41 $0.27 $0.23
Comparative cost per bar
Teeny Little Large
Blue company (Chief competitor) blue blue blue
$0.45 $0.25 $0.24
1.5 Oz. 3.0 Oz. 5.0 Oz.
Industry average Bar Bar Bar
$0.50 $0.20 $0.30
390 J. G. Bushong et al.
options including the choice of 23 different gas tank sizes and various locations for the
tanks on the trucks themselves. This occurred although the majority of customers chose
only two gas tanks. A cursory study at Navistar indicated that it cost about $20,000 to
maintain one part number. 2
Immediately following the team meeting, Johnson, who had experience implementing
ABC at a company other than Navistar, developed a questionnaire, and administered it to
the 125 employees. The results obtained were frustrating. The employees indicated that
they engaged in over 40 different activities that included over 30 different cost driver
possibilities. This will be difficult not only for the accounting professionals to understand,
thought Joe, but it will be impossible to communicate effectively to the managers and staff.
Joe then re-administered the questionnaire to the employees after reducing the number
of potential activities on the questionnaire to 15. He was elated when the questionnaire
results indicated that the 125 employees spent 95% of their time on the following seven
activities:
1. 25% making the soap;
2. 11% downtime/repair due to equipment breakdown; 3. 20% setting up or shutting down the equipment due to changeover of products;
4. 12% reworking soap;
5. 12% breaks;
6. 4% team building meetings;
7. 11% material movement; and
8. 5% unaccounted for (other).
Owing to his previous experience with ABC, Joe realized that driving the non-labour
costs to the above activities was not a science but instead called for judgment. Joe had
lengthy discussions with the production people, but he realized that both the lack of avail-
able data and the ability to collect it hampered the choosing of resource drivers and the
costing of activities. Joe and Lisa finally decided that they should drive costs to the activi-
ties in the manner shown in Table 3. I would rather be directionally right than precisely
wrong, thought Joe. This will get us pointed in the right direction.
After driving the general ledger labour and overhead costs to the activities (some com-
panies call this a first stage allocation), Joe analysed the activities and the potential second-
stage activity drivers listed in Table 4. The practical relevance of the drivers was essential,
Table 3. Consumer brands activity-based costing—first stage allocation rates.
Making Downtime
Change
over Rework Breaks
Team
meetings
Material
movement
Other
activity Total
Labour 25% 11% 20% 12% 12% 4% 11% 5% 100%
Depreciation 32% 14% 25% 15% 14% 100%
Administrative
overhead
100% 100%
Taxes and
insurance
25% 50% 25% 100%
Engineering
and R&D
100% 100%
Utilities 32% 14% 25% 15% 14% 100%
Other costs 100% 100%
Instructional Case—Activity-based Costing 391
and they had to identify the necessary data with the three bars of soap so they could drive
the activity costs to the products. In some cases, the company was not collecting the
necessary data; thus, they had to create the records, which caused delays in the ABC
project. What a headache, thought Joe, I will be glad when the project is over. In
making the decision for the activity drivers, Joe and Lisa noted that the production
process itself was highly automated. While the dedicated employees were not truly
unique to the product, Lisa and Joe decided that the breaks and team activity would prob-
ably have to depend on this driver. Finally, Joe and Lisa decided to drive the other activity
using volume of soap.
Case Requirements
1. Drive the labour and overhead costs to the seven activities identified by Joe. You should
allocate any costs you cannot associate to a specific activity to other. (Some companies
call this a first stage allocation.)
2. Determine the conversion cost per bar for each of the three product sizes by preparing a
bill of activities for each product. (Some companies call this a second stage allocation.)
3. Discuss the reasons for the different per bar cost under traditional costing and activity-
based costing.
4. Discuss the activities and determine whether they are value added or non-value added.
5. Discuss how management might use the output from the ABC calculation in decision-
making.
A Teaching Note and Students’ Assessment
Case Solution
We present the case solution in Exhibits 2 and 3. The first stage allocation, shown in
Exhibit 2, allocates all labour and overhead costs to the activities identified in the case.
The second stage allocation, shown in Exhibit 3, allocates the activity costs from the
Table 4. Consumer brands additional second stage drivers.
Production changeovers
Number
per month
Days
per month
Hours
per month
Hours
per month
Tiny 2 3 24 288
Little 1 2 16 192
Big 2 2 16 192
Total 5 7 56 672
Efficiency
rates %
uptime
Times
handled
per bar
Dedicated
employees
Recycled
weight in
pounds
Number
of orders
Tiny 60% 3 3 25,000 750
Little 64% 2 70 60,000 5000
Big 67% 3 15 50,000 2200
Total 88 135,000 7950
392 J. G. Bushong et al.
first stage allocation to the three product sizes. Exhibits 6 and 7 include the unedited
responses prepared by one of our students to questions 3 to 5.
Case Discussion
We use the case in undergraduate upper-division cost/managerial accounting courses. The students are Bachelor of Science in Accounting (BSA) students in their junior year. They
complete principles of managerial accounting course in their sophomore year. Both
accounting and non-accounting students take the principles of managerial accounting
course; therefore, it is general in nature. Only accounting students take the cost/manage- rial course, so it is more rigorous. We introduce some of the concepts that are in the cost/ managerial accounting course in the principles course, but the complexity and level of
detail is much greater in the second course. We assign the case to students to complete
outside of class. Requirements 1 and 2 require several calculations to arrive at a final
solution, and students must write a report for Requirements 3, 4, and 5. We give the
students approximately two weeks to complete the case.
Determination of the Cost per Bar of Soap
We believe students must understand how product cost allocations affect management
decisions and ultimately the performance of the company. When students calculate
product cost, they become active participants in the learning process. This enhances
their understanding of how different assumptions and methods affect product cost. The
students must resolve many of the difficulties they encounter without the assistance of
the instructor because they are working on the case outside of the class. Often students
assist each other in resolving the difficulties encountered. We encourage collaboration,
but each student must submit his/her own work. When students construct their own spreadsheets, they obtain a better understanding of how total manufacturing costs affect
per unit product cost and how changes in cost or allocation methods affect cost per
unit. We believe it is important for students to have experience with cost allocations,
since many of our students will perform this task immediately upon entering the work
force as management accountants. These are the primary objectives of case Requirements
1 and 2. We provide students with examples of partially completed worksheets for both the
first stage (Exhibit 4) and second stage (Exhibit 5) allocations in order to minimize the
amount of time spent developing the solution to Requirements 1 and 2. We have found
that this allows students to gain an understanding for the required calculations, but
keeps them from losing their appreciation for the managerial implications of product
costs. The information in Exhibits 4 and 5 provides students with check figures for both
the first stage allocation and the second stage allocation. They also provide all activity
drivers for the second stage allocation and show how the students should allocate costs
of one of the eight activities to the three products.
As indicated above, we require students to use Excel to solve the case. This requirement
contributes to the educational value of the case because we can require that students
manipulate the variables to determine what effect changes in activities and drivers have
on the unit costs. The activity decisions used in the first stage allocation are somewhat
arbitrary. We often ask students to suggest different allocation methods for the first
stage allocation as an additional requirement. Students can use their allocation rates to cal-
culate product costs because of the use of Excel. However, we often do this as an in-class
activity. Undergraduate students sometimes believe there is a single product cost. This
Instructional Case—Activity-based Costing 393
Exhibit 2. Consumer brands activity-based costing—first stage allocation—costing activities
Making Downtime Changeover Rework Breaks
Team
meeting
Material
movement Other Total
Total labour $2,006,250 $882,750 $1,605,000 $963,000 $963,000 $321,000 $882,750 $401,250 $8,025,000
Per cent 25% 11% 20% 12% 12% 4% 11% 5% 100%
Depreciation $312,000 $136,500 $243,750 $146,250 $0 $0 $136,500 $0 $975,000
Per cent 32% 14% 25% 15% 0% 0% 14% 0% 100%
Total overhead $0 $0 $0 $0 $0 $0 $0 $2,050,000 $2,050,000
Per cent 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 100% 100%
Taxes &
insurance
$87,500 $175,000 $87,500 $0 $0 $0 $0 $0 $350,000
Per cent 25% 50% 25% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 100%
Engineering
and R & D
$1,000,000 $0 $0 $0 $0 $0 $0 $0 $1,000,000
Per cent 100% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 100%
Utilities $222,400 $97,300 $173,750 $104,250 $0 $0 $97,300 $0 $695,000
Per cent 32% 14% 25% 15% 0% 0% 14% 0% 100%
Other 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 200,000 200,000
Per cent 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 100% 100%
Total production
costs
$3,628,150 $1,291,550 $2,110,000 $1,213,500 $963,000 $321,000 $1,116,550 $2,651,250 $13,295,000
Per cent 27% 10% 16% 9% 7% 2% 8% 20% 100%
3 9 4
J .
G .
B u sh
o n g
e t
a l.
Exhibit 3. Consumer brands activity-based costing—second stage allocation—costing products bill of activities
Making Downtime Changeover Rework Breaks Team meetings Material movement Other Total
Total $3,628,150 $1,291,550 $2,110,000 $1,213,500 $963,000 $321,000 $1,116,550 $2,651,250 $13,295,000
Activity
drivers
Uptime
machine
hours
Downtime
machine hours
Changeover
hours
Recycled
weight in
pounds
Dedicated
employees
Dedicated
employees
Number
of times
handled
Total bars
produced
Activity
driver base
1,306,560 711,440 672 135,000 88 88 118,000,000 51,000,000
Activity rate
Dollars per
base unit
$2.777 $1.815 $3,139.881 $8.989 $10,943.182 $3,647.727 $0.009 $0.052
Tiny—total
dollars
$83,306 $36,308 $904,286 $224,722 $32,830 $10,943 $28,387 $51,985 $1,372,767
Tiny—dollars
per bar
$0.08 $0.04 $0.90 $0.22 $0.03 $0.01 $0.03 $0.05 $1.37
Little—total
dollars
$2,488,077 $914,963 $602,857 $539,333 $766,023 $255,341 $662,360 $1,819,485 $8,048,440
Little—dollars
per bar
$0.07 $0.03 $0.02 $0.02 $0.02 $0.01 $0.02 $0.05 $0.23
Big—total
dollars
$1,056,766 $340,279 $602,857 $449,444 $164,148 $54,716 $425,803 $779,779 $3,873,793
Big—dollars
per bar
$0.07 $0.02 $0.04 $0.03 $0.01 $0.00 $0.03 $0.05 $0.26
In stru
c tio
n a l
C a se
— A
c tiv
ity -b
a se
d C
o stin
g 3 9 5
Exhibit 4. Consumer brands—check figures activity-based costing—first stage allocation—costing activities
Making Downtime Changeover Rework Breaks
Team
meetings
Material
movement Other Total
Total labour $2,006,250 $882,750 $1,605,000 $963,000 $963,000 $321,000 $882,750 $401,250 $8,025,000
Per cent 25% 11% 20% 12% 12% 4% 11% 5% 100%
Depreciation $312,000 $975,000
Per cent 32% 100%
Total overhead $0 $2,050,000
Per cent 0% 100%
Taxes and insurance $87,500 $350,000
Per cent 25% 100%
Engineering and R&D $1,000,000 $1,000,000
Per cent 100% 100%
Utilities $222,400 $695,000
Per cent 32% 100%
Other 0 200,000
Per cent 0% 100%
Total production costs $3,628,150 $1,291,550 $2,110,000 $1,213,500 $963,000 $321,000 $1,116,550 $2,651,250 $13,295,000
Per cent 27% 10% 16% 9% 7% 2% 8% 20% 100%
3 9 6
J .
G .
B u sh
o n g
e t
a l.
Exhibit 5. Consumer brands—check figures activity-based costing—second stage allocation—costing products bill of activities
Making Downtime Changeover Rework Breaks Team meetings Material movement Other Total
Total $3,628,150 $1,291,550 $2,110,000 $1,213,500 $963,000 $321,000 $1,116,550 $2,651,250 $13,295,000
Activity drivers Uptime
machine
hours
Downtime
machine
hours
Changeover
hours
Recycled
weight in
pounds
Dedicated
employees
Dedicated
employees
Number
of times
handled
Total Bars
produced
Activity driver base 1,306,560
Activity rate
Dollars per base unit $2.777
Tiny—total dollars $83,306 $1,372,767
Tiny—dollars per bar $0.08 $1.37
Little—total dollars $2,488,077 $8,048,440
Little—dollars per bar $0.07 $0.23
Big—total dollars $1,056,766 $3,873,793
Big—dollars per bar $0.07 $0.26
In stru
c tio
n a l
C a se
— A
c tiv
ity -b
a se
d C
o stin
g 3 9 7
activity highlights the fact that companies base product costs on underlying assumptions
and allocation methods and that there is no one correct product cost.
Using the Information Provided by Activity-Based Costing
Case Requirements 3, 4, and 5 reinforce students’ understanding of cost allocation. They
also highlight how management uses product costs in decision-making. We show a repre-
sentative solution to Requirement 3 in Exhibit 6. Exhibit 7 provides an answer to Require-
ments 4 and 5. The solutions shown in Exhibits 6 and 7 are an actual student’s responses to
the questions. We included the unedited responses from one of our students to provide an
indication of the level that our students are achieving.
Exhibit 6. Consumer brands reasons for cost differences ABC costing versus traditional
costing unedited response by a student.
In the traditional costing method, there were only three cost categories: labour, depre-
ciation, and all other. Nearly 1/3 of the $13,295,000 total cost had been lumped together into all other, and the accounting department had allocated the entire amount based on pro-
duction volume. As a result, the Tiny bars carried very little of the total other cost because
of its low production volume when in fact producing Tiny bars drove a high percentage of
that total cost. Consumer Brands assigned labour based on employee categorization of
activity that everyone admitted was ‘not realistic.’ They allocated depreciation based on
machine hours, and it was probably the closest to being correct, although it did not
reflect well the downtime/setup costs involved in running production of Tiny bars. In summary, the traditional costing process did not allow for an accurate reflection of the
differences in activity required to produce the different sizes of bars even though it resulted
in Consumer Brands costing at more than twice Little or Big.
The activity-based-costing effort forced the organization to look hard at what activities
existed, why they engaged in those activities and the amount of time that each one took for
each product line. Doing this allowed the organization to choose better activity bases for cost
allocation, and it became clear that during every production run of Tiny bars there would be
a huge ‘whoosh’ heard throughout the plant as costs rushed into the process. While the cost
per bar of actually making the Tiny bars was not very different from the making cost for
Little or Big, the changeover and rework costs for Tiny were significantly higher due to its extre-
mely low volume. Ultimately, the cost of the activities to run the Tiny bars was shown to be more
than 10 times the cost per bar due primarily to the high cost of changeover and rework.
Although the case does not state what happened after they studied the ABC data, I
would assume that the organization re-evaluated the way they do business on Tiny. It
may not be a bad product line; maybe the company just needs to market it differently.
If they can increase the volume of orders (and therefore production), Tiny’s cost per
bar will fall. It would be very interesting to go back and re-examine the original marketing
projections for Tiny. They must have been higher or the company never would have
decided to start production in the first place, even at the traditional cost levels. The
company should start asking why it is not meeting sales expectations.
Exhibit 7. Consumer brands discussion of manufacturing activities unedited response
by a student.
The ABC cost analysis provides Consumer Brands useful information about their pro-
cesses. For instance, 10% of their costs are attributable to the non-value-added activity
398 J. G. Bushong et al.
downtime/repair. There is no information about the portion of downtime that is scheduled for maintenance (and I would argue that scheduled downtime for maintenance is actually
value added) versus actual machine breakdowns, but the company should examine the
equipment to see if improvements can be made to increase efficiency and reduce costs.
Changeover is a non-value-added activity because the company is not producing
product; yet changeover caused 16% of the total cost. Consumer Brands must limit the
number of changeovers to reduce costs. Rework is also non-value added, but reworking
the product caused 9% of total cost. These three activities, which are essentially non-
value added, create 35% of Consumer Brands total cost for producing soap. Activity-
based costing has illuminated these activities that traditional product costing hid; thus,
providing management activities to examine for possible elimination or reduction.
It is not clear whether breaks, team meetings, and material movement are value added or
non-value-added activities. The traditional answer would say that meetings and breaks do
not add value, and strictly speaking, this is true since employees are not producing product
while they are in meetings or taking breaks. However, some employee breaks are essential
because a shift with no breaks would probably end up running lower production numbers
due to employee fatigue, inattention, and lower morale. The amount of time employees
spend taking breaks does not appear excessive if it includes paid lunch breaks. If it
does not include paid lunch breaks, then it is excessive. Meetings add value when compa-
nies use them for necessary information sharing and training, but some portion of meetings
may be non-value added. A certain amount of material movement is necessary, but with
8% of total cost attributable to material movement, it appears improvements in the flow of
the product may reduce that cost.
The other category is still nearly 20% of the total cost. Management needs to fully
understand what goes into that cost and reduce cost wherever possible. It is difficult to
judge whether the activities are value added or non-value added until better information
is available.
The only activity that is clearly value added is making the product. However, based on
the ABC analysis, making accounts for only 27% of the total cost. Although the Soap
Team Manager and accountant based the ABC analysis on several assumptions, it provides
management information that they can use to reduce or eliminate non-value-added
activities.
The response in Exhibit 7 answers both Requirements 4 and 5, but many students
answer these questions separately. Students commonly respond to Requirement 5 that
management should eliminate the Tiny Bar from Consumer Brands’ product line.
However, the case does not contain enough information to allow students to make that rec-
ommendation. After we return the case, we discuss items management should consider
before making product line decisions and other strategic implications of the case.
Exhibit 8 presents several items management should consider in light of the ABC study
before making product line decisions.
Exhibit 8. Consumer brands inputs into product decisions.
. Can consumer brands increase the sales price of the Tiny Bar? Market factors, not cost normally establish prices. Under costing of products often leads to under pricing. Com-
petition will normally indicate over costing and overpricing, but the market indicates
under costing and under pricing much less lucidly. A pump manufacturer, for
example, asked the authors why his sales force was so enamoured with the sale of spe-
cialty pumps. The answer was that the pumps were under costed; therefore, under priced
and easy to sell.
Instructional Case—Activity-based Costing 399
. Will demand for the company’s other products change if the company eliminates the Tiny Bar? For example, does Consumer Brands sell the Tiny Bar to institutions such
as hotels and motels that will stop purchasing other company products if the Tiny
Bar is not available? If Consumer Brands’ customers view the three bar sizes as substi-
tutes for each other, then sales of the other two sizes may increase. If customers view
Tiny Bar as a product that complements the other two bars, then sales of the other
two sizes may decrease.
. Will Consumer Brand’s costs actually decrease if they eliminate the Tiny Bar and if so by how much? Only five employees work exclusively on Tiny Bar production. Labour
cost will decrease by those five employees, but other costs may or may not decrease.
. If demand for the other two sizes does not increase, there may be additional downtime where the company is not producing product and subsequently not earning revenue.
The case illustrates the typical pattern of how under costing a low volume product often
leads to companies losing money on the product. The rework and changeover activities
illustrated in this case are non-value-added, and illustrate how companies may under
cost low volume products when these types of activities are present. Unfortunately, tra-
ditional accounting systems fail to capture this unprofitability. We emphasize that the
rework and changeover on low volume products are inevitably costly, and companies
must eliminate or reduce these non-value-added activities and increase the volume of
the production line to reduce the total cost of low volume products. We show other poss-
ible items for discussion in Exhibit 9.
Exhibit 9. Consumer brands additional items for classroom discussion.
. The costing of activities illustrated by the first stage allocation permits companies to more readily focus on value added and non-value-added activities.
. Although this case illustrates the use of ABC in a manufacturing environment, service companies also use ABC. They do not have a physical product to cost, but they do
engage in activities, and they do have services. To be successful, service businesses
must know the costs of services they provide to their customers.
. ABC often points out the dangers associated with specialized products such as Tiny. Often companies know when specialized products are under costed, but do not know
the magnitude. ABC provides a directional response to these intuitive beliefs.
. What effect will adoption of ABC for financial accounting have on the company’s finan- cial position?
Students’ Assessment
Anecdotal evidence suggests that the students view our course as difficult but believe they
have learned a lot in the course. Limited student feedback is available through the end-of-
semester student evaluations. No specific questions on the evaluation form relate to the
ABC case. Instead, there are open-ended questions asking ‘What did you like best
about the class?’ and ‘What did you like least about the class?’ Students frequently
mention the ABC case in response to both of these questions. Some students complain
that the case was too unstructured and/or different from the examples in the textbook or the homework problems. We actually view this type of comment as reinforcement as
to the necessity of implementing the case to push students beyond memorization.
Additionally, the number of comments expressing satisfaction with the challenge of
400 J. G. Bushong et al.
learning as opposed to memorization overshadows these complaints. Representative,
unedited, comments by students follow:
. The case benefited my understanding of the material since it forced me to understand cost allocation at different stages of the production process. Putting the spreadsheets
together facilitated my relational understanding of costs.
. I found the case to be helpful in improving my understanding of the process of perform- ing an ABC analysis. Having hands-on experience in building the analysis was wonder-
ful preparation for the real world.
. I learned what went on in the first stage allocation and understood the text better.
. I felt like the case assignment was great because it gave me some practical experience. Just working out of the book can feel tedious.
Finally, students at the university at which one author currently works and another
author previously worked have had tremendous success in the IMA Case Competition.
They have won the competition four times, and they have been semi-finalist another
four times. While this is not directly attributable to the case, it is an indication that the stu-
dents are receiving a good understanding of cost/managerial accounting.
Possible Expansion of the Case
We have not included certain ABC concepts in the case in order to make it a manageable
case for undergraduate students to complete in a two-week time span. Including other
ABC concepts, however, can strengthen the case. For instance, an increase in the difficulty
of the case and an increase in student thought processes and learning, would result from
the inclusion of idle capacity. This introduces the question of whether to drive these
costs down to the product. The students can support their answer with a numerical
example. A discussion and/or use of cost hierarchy would also strengthen the case. Stu- dents can define cost hierarchy, discuss the reasoning behind the concept, and use it to
determine the appropriate cost allocations. Another possible expansion is to have the stu-
dents determine the percentages, and their rationale, for the first stage allocations. This
would take effort on the instructor’s part to frame the question such that the students
can make decisions based on some facts, but it would reinforce their understanding of
the arbitrary nature of first stage allocations.
Summary
Over the years, many companies have experimented with ABC, but ultimately reverted to
a traditional cost accounting system. However, accountants entering the work force need
to understand the advantages and difficulties of implementing ABC. Even though many of
our students will not work in a manufacturing environment, many service businesses have
implemented or experimented with ABC. Like manufacturers, service businesses must
determine the cost of activities before they can determine the cost of products. This
case highlights the difficulties in determining the cost of the activities that go into produ-
cing a good or service.
Instructors can use the case to illustrate many of the difficulties that companies encoun-
ter when they attempt to implement ABC. The case illustrates determining activities and
costing them, which are both difficult problems in implementing ABC. The case empha-
sizes the allocation of costs from a traditional general ledger to the activities and the selec-
tion of activity drivers in the absence of perfect information. The case helps students
Instructional Case—Activity-based Costing 401
understand that many variables affect the computed per unit cost of products and that there
is no exact per unit cost. More importantly, it illustrates that accounting is a directional, as
opposed to a precise, discipline. In addition, students have an opportunity to analyze how
management might use the output provided by ABC to make process and product
decisions.
The 7 September 1998, issue of Fortune summarized the annual ‘Management Tools
and Techniques Survey’ conducted by Bain & Co (Rigby, 1998). The database included
4,137 responses and 224 personal interviews with senior managers in 15 countries.
Seventy-seven per cent of the executives reported ‘management tools promised more
than they delivered and even highly rated management tools varied widely in their
ability to improve financial results and competitive advantage’ (Rigby, 1998, pp. 162 –
163). According to the article, management tools are more like chain saws than silver
bullets since they are potentially powerful but extraordinarily dangerous when applied
erroneously. Managers reported that the most dangerous management tools included
ABC, knowledge management, and re-engineering. We believe this case will help in miti-
gating the ‘chain saw’ possibilities of activity-based costing.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank Jeff Jackson, a former student, for his assistance in the
early development of this case. The authors would also like to thank the Associate
Editor and two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments. Their input signifi-
cantly improved our paper.
The authors have developed an Excel spreadsheet to use in solving the case and per-
forming sensitivity analysis. The authors will supply the spreadsheet and the case in a
format suitable for copying and distributing to students on request.
Notes
1 Although Consumer Brands (the company in the case) is not an actual company, we based the scenario in
this case on an actual company that wishes to remain anonymous. 2 We based this section on discussions with Navistar personnel and a seminar one of the authors performed for
Navistar about activity-based costing.
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Instructional Case—Activity-based Costing 403