Question Tag: Changeover Costing

Tee Company makes and sells a product, the Green, which is nearing the end of its life. A replacement product, Brace, has been designed and test marketed, and the company is trying to decide when to replace Green with Brace. Tee Company only has the capability to produce one of the two products at a time.

Sales of Green are expected to be 100,000 units in the first quarter of Year 7 and are forecast to fall after that so that each quarter’s sales will be 10% less than those of the previous quarter. Green has a selling price of ₦14 per unit, and its Contribution to Sales ratio (C/S ratio) is 40%. The fixed costs of making Green in Year 7 will be ₦200,000 per quarter.

Test market results for Brace were very good, and demand for similar products is growing rapidly. Tee Company believes that sales of Brace can be predicted by the following equation:

Y = 80,000 + 6,000 T

Where:

• Y = Sales of Brace in units per quarter
• T = Time, measured in quarters. For the first quarter of Year 7 (January to March Year 7), T = 1; for the second quarter of Year 7, T = 2; etc.

The selling price of Brace will be ₦16, and its contribution per unit will be ₦6. Fixed costs will increase to ₦240,000 per quarter if Green is replaced by Brace.

To avoid disruption of the production of Tee’s other products, the changeover between Green and Brace must take place on either 1 January Year 7 or 1 July Year 7. The costs of changeover will differ depending upon which date is chosen, and the following information is available:

1. Some of the machinery used to make the Green will no longer be required for the Brace. The written-down value of this machinery will be ₦250,000 on 1 January Year 7, and ₦220,000 by 1 July Year 7. Its net realizable value at 1 January Year 7 will be ₦140,000, but by 1 July Year 7, it will be ₦30,000.
2. Some redundancies will result from the change of products. Redundancy payments of ₦40,000 will be made if the changeover occurs on 1 January, but these will rise to ₦50,000 by 1 July. The five administration workers concerned are each paid ₦20,000 per annum and will not be replaced. Their wages are not included in the costs given above.