A medium-sized manufacturing company, which operates in the electronics industry, has employed a firm of consultants to carry out a review of the company's planning and control systems. The company presently uses a traditional incremental budgeting system and the inventory management system is based on economic order quantities (EOQ) and reorder levels. The company's normal production patterns have changed significantly over the previous few years as a result of increasing demand for customized products. This has resulted in shorter production runs and difficulties with production and resource planning.
The consultants have recommended the implementation of activity based budgeting and a manufacturing resource planning system to improve planning and resource management.
Select ALL the benefits for the company that could occur following the introduction of an activity based budgeting system.

• A. Activity based techniques including activity based budgeting focus on the outputs of a process rather than the input to the process. This approach provides a clear framework for understanding the link between costs and the level of activity. It allows the ranking of activities and the determination of how limited resources should be allocated across competing activities.
• B. Activity based budgeting allows the identification of value added and non-value added activities and ensures that cuts are made to non-value added activities. ABB is also useful for review of capacity utilization.
• C. ABB systems present costs under functional headings i.e. the emphasis is on the nature of the cost. The weakness of this approach is that it gives little indication of the link between the level of activity and the cost incurred.
• D. The approach under an activity based system is to make arbitrary cuts in order to meet overall financial targets.
• E. Under an activity based budgeting system the focus is on existing resources and operations. Adjustments are then made for changes in activity and price which results in past inefficiencies being perpetuated.
  Under a traditional budgeting system, only resources that are needed to perform activities required to meet the budgeted production and sales volumes are included.
• F. Under an activity based budgeting system, resource allocation is linked to the strategic plan is prepared after considering alternative strategies. This approach ensures that new activities that are required to meet the company's strategic objectives are included in the budget.

A company uses an activity based costing system. The company manufactures three products, details of which are given below:

• A. $0.23
• B. $0.31
• C. $0.27
• D. $0.35

EF manufactures and sells three products, X, Y and Z. The following production overhead costs are budgeted for next year:

Required:
Calculate the total budgeted production overhead cost for each product using activity based budgeting.

• A. The total budgeted production overhead cost was $ 1 285 000
• B. The total budgeted production overhead cost was $ 1 188 000
• C. The total budgeted production overhead cost was $ 1 305 000
• D. The total budgeted production overhead cost was $ 2 195 000
• E. The total budgeted production overhead cost was $ 1 258 000

A company is preparing its annual budget and is estimating the number of units of Product W that it will sell in each quarter of year 2. Past experience has shown that the trend for sales of the product is represented by the following relationship:

Calculate the expected unit sales of Product W for each quarter of year 2, after adjusting for seasonal variations using the multiplicative model.

• A. The sales forecast for year 2 Quarter 4 = 35,100 units
• B. The sales forecast for year 2 Quarter 4 = 22,600 units
• C. The sales forecast for year 2 Quarter 4 = 25,100 units
• D. The sales forecast for year 2 Quarter 4 = 38,100 units

A company produces three products D, E and F. The statement below shows the selling price and product costs per unit for each product, based on a traditional absorption costing system.

Each of the products is produced using Process A which has a maximum capacity of 2,500 hours per period.
If a throughput accounting approach is used, the ranking of products, in order of priority, for the profit maximizing product mix will be:

• A. D, E, F
• B. E, D, F
• C. D, F, E
• D. F, D, E