Chapter 27, Problem 27.21EX

Process activity analysis

The Brite Beverage Company hollies soft drinks into aluminum cans. The manufacturing pro­cess consists of three activities:

1. 1. Mixing: water, sugar, and beverage concentrate are mixed.
2. 2. Filling: mixed (leverage is filled into 12-oz. cans.
3. 3. Packaging: properly filled cans are boxed into cardboard “fridge packs."

The activity costs associated with these activities for the period are as follows:

Mixing	$216,000
Filling	168,000
Packaging	96,000
Total	$480,000

The activity costs do not include materials costs, which are ignored for this anal) sis. Each can is expected to contain 12 ounces of beverage. Thus, after being filled, each can is automatically weighed. If a can is too light, it is rejected, or “kicked," from the filling line prior to being packaged. The primary cause of kicks is heat expansion. With heat expansion, the beverage overflows during filling, resulting in underweight cans.

This proce.ss begins by mixing and filling 6,300,000 cans during the period, of which only 6,000,000 cans are actually packaged. Three hundred thousand cans are rejected due to underweight kicks.

A process improvement team has determined that cooling the cans prior to filling them will reduce the amount of overflows due to expansion. After this improvement, the number of kicks is expected to decline from 300,000 cans to 63,000 cans, thus increasing the number of filled cans to 6,237,000 [6,000,000 + (300,000 – 63,000)].

• A. Determine the total activity cost per packaged can under present operations.
• B. Determine the amount of increased packaging activity costs from the expected improvements.
• C. Determine the expected total activity cost per packaged can after improvements. (Round to three decimal places.)