Chapter 4, Problem 4.49BP

Using ABC in conjunction with quality decisions (Learning Objectives 2 & 5)

Big Yellow Construction Toys Corporation is using a costs-of-quality approach to evaluate design engineering efforts for a new toy robot. The company’s senior managers expect the engineering work to reduce appraisal, internal failure, and external failure activities. The predicted reductions in activities over the two-year life of the toy robot follow. Also shown are the cost allocation rates for the activities.

Activity	Predicted Reduction in Activity Units	Activity Cost Allocation Rate per Unit
Inspection of incoming materials	305	$22
Inspection of finished goods	305	$34
Number of defective units discovered in-house	3,100	$11
Number of defective units discovered by customers	825	$41
Lost sales to dissatisfied customers	280	$58

Requirements

1. 1. Calculate the predicted quality cost savings from the design engineering work.
2. 2. The company spent $65,000 on design engineering for the new toy robot. What is the net benefit of this “preventive” quality activity?
3. 3. What major difficulty would management have had in implementing this costs-of-quality approach? What alternative approach could it use to measure quality improvement?