The Blog is a final Bus Stop for Academic Materials such as Assignments, Essays, Reports, Thesis, Projects, Dissertations Among others.

Wednesday, 20 May 2015

LIMITING FACTOR IN MANAGEMENT ACCOUNTING



For questions and answers, email theotherwomaninmarriage@gmail.com  

Note: This is an Exam Question and will be 15 marks.

CHOICE OF PRODUCT WHERE LIMITING FACTOR EXIST
All companies limited in their capacity, either for producing goods or providing services.  There is always one resource that is most restrictive (The Limiting Factor).

A limiting factor  (principal budget factor) is a constraint that limits the volume of output or activity level.  Limiting factor may be  in form of sales, demand, materials, labour, capital, equipment, plant capacity etc. 

A limiting factor is therefore any factor that is in scarce supply and that stops the organization from expanding its activities further, that is, it limits the organization’s activities.  Most limiting factor problems can be solved in five steps; 

i.                     Identify the limiting factor in the problem which may be any of limited capacity, scare material, labour hours etc.

ii.                   Find the contribution per unit of each product

iii.                  Divide the contribution of each product by the quantity of limiting factor needed to produce one unit of the product.

iv.                 Rank the products based on their contribution per unit of limiting factor

v.                   Schedule production according to the step (iv) above.

ILLUSTRATION:
The Other Woman In Marriage Company is able to produce four products and is planning its production mix for the next period.  Estimated cost, sales and production data are given below:  
                                               
                       BKT                        Zobo                      Kunu                     Shekpe
                        N                             N                            N                         N
Selling Price/Unit 20                         30                           40                        36
Direct Materials   6                           18                            10                        12
Direct labour      6                             4                             14                        10

RESOURCES/UNIT
Labour (hours)    3                            2                               7                         5
Materials (kgs)   6                             18                            10                        12
Maximum Demand (units)  5,000       5,000                      5,000                     5,000

  Based on the above, what is the most appropriate product mix under the following two assumptions?

(1)    If labour hours are limited to 60,000 in a period
(2)    If materials are limited to 120,000 kgs in a period

SOLUTION:
                               
                        BKT                        Zobo                      Kunu                     Shekpe
                         N                             N                            N                         N
Selling Price/Unit20                          30                           40                         36

Less Variable Cost:
Direct Materials  (6)                         (18)                         (10)                       (12)
Direct labour     ( 6)                           ( 4)                         (14)                     (10)
Contribution:       8                             8                             16                       14

Do you know how we got the contribution? If know, the figures in bracket minus the selling price per unit.  i.e. 20 – (6)(6) = 8.  That is to say, add the figures in bracket together, then minus them from the selling price.

The next step is to bring down the contribution  figures to continue the workings.
8                             8                             16                       14 
3                             2                              7                          5
  =N2.67                =  N4                     =N2.29                   =N2.8

Do you know how we got the figures 3, 2, 7, 5 above? If you don’t, we got them from the Labour hours in the question.  Because, we are working on limiting factor of the labour hours.  The 8, 8, 16 and 14 figures are the ones we brought down from the contribution we calculated above.

Please, note that this explanation is to enable your understanding.  There should be no such explanation when solving in exams.  You should do your workings directly and don’t stop and explain.

Now let’s continue from where we stopped:

The next stage is Ranking.  By ranking, we would know the product to produce first by ranking the one we highest figure as no 1, the next as no 2 and so on.  So let bring down our workings again.
                  8                             8                             16                       14 
                 3                                2                            7                          5
             =N2.67                     =  N4                         =N2.29            =N2.8
Ranking:  3nd                            1st                              4th                      2nd

Now we know the product to produce first from our ranking, so let’s draw the production plan;
 
PRODUCTION PLAN
Labour Our required:

Ranking:               Product                      Demand               Total Hours
1.                            Zobo                      5,000 x 2                  10,000
2.                            Shekpe                   5,000 x 5                  25,000
3.                            BKT                        5,000 x 3                  15,000
4.                            Kunu                       5,000 x 7                 35,000
                Labour our required:                                            85,000

The labour our required is 85,000 if we are to produce all product with the demands from our customer but we have available Labour Hours of 60,000. So we have to work with what we have.


Ranking:               Product                 Demand               Total Hours         Balance Hours
1.                            Zobo                      5,000 x 2               10,000                   50,000
2.                            Shekpe                 5,000 x 5                 25,000                   25,000
3.                            BKT                        5,000 x 3               15,000                   10,000
4.                            Kunu                     1,429 x 7                10,000                   -
               


For Kunu, we can’t produce all the 5,000 demanded.  Reason why, we have 10,000 hours left for our use. So we have to do something like this:
 10,000/7=1,429.

That is it.  With this explanation, task yourselves to work on materials – the part (b) of the question.  Everything is the same.   All you need to do is replace material figures with labour hours figures and do your working from the stage of getting contribution.

Without all this long explanation, this is how your working for the part (a) Labour Hours will look like below:

SOLUTION (A):
                               
                            BKT                        Zobo                      Kunu                     Shekpe
                             N                             N                            N                         N
Selling Price/Unit    20                             30                           40                      36

Less Variable Cost:
Direct Materials      (6)                            (18)                         (10)                       (12)
Direct labour         ( 6)                           ( 4)                         (14)                     (10)
Contribution:          8                             8                             16                       14
                              8                             8                             16                       14 
                              3                             2                              7                          5
                           =N2.67                     =  N4                         =N2.29               =N2.8
     Ranking:          3nd                            1st                              4th                  2nd


 


PRODUCTION PLAN


Ranking:               Product                    Demand               Total Hours         Balance Hours
1.                            Zobo                      5,000 x 2               10,000                   50,000
2.                            Shekpe                 5,000 x 5               25,000                   25,000
3.                            BKT                        5,000 x 3               15,000                   10,000
4.                            Kunu                     1,429 x 7               10,000                   -
               
10,000/7=1,429.


No comments:

Post a Comment