问答题

3.Bokco is a manufacturing company. It has a small permanent workforce but it is also reliant on temporary workers,whom it hires on three-month contracts whenever production requirements increase. All buying of materials is the responsibility of the company’s purchasing department and the company’s policy is to hold low levels of raw materialsin order to minimise inventory holding costs. Bokco uses cost plus pricing to set the selling prices for its products oncean initial cost card has been drawn up. Prices are then reviewed on a quarterly basis. Detailed variance reports areproduced each month for sales, material costs and labour costs. Departmental managers are then paid a monthlybonus depending on the performance of their department. One month ago, Bokco began production of a new product. The standard cost card for one unit was drawn up toinclude a cost of $84 for labour, based on seven hours of labour at $12 per hour. Actual output of the product duringthe first month of production was 460 units and the actual time taken to manufacture the product totalled 1,860hours at a total cost of $26,040. After being presented with some initial variance calculations, the production manager has realised that the standardtime per unit of seven hours was the time taken to produce the first unit and that a learning rate of 90% should havebeen anticipated for the first 1,000 units of production. He has consequently been criticised by other departmentalmanagers who have said that, ‘He has no idea of all the problems this has caused. Required: (a)Calculate the labour efficiency planning variance and the labour efficiency operational variance AFTER taking account of the learning effect. Note: The learning index for a 90% learning curve is –0·1520 (5 marks)