Slopes Inc. manufactures and sells snowboards. Slopes manufactures a single model, the Pipex. In the summerof 2011, Slopes' management accountant gathered the following data to preparebudgets for 2012:

Part I

Part II Other considerations:

1) Since its inception, Slopes has used spruce wood for the core of its snowboards. Several years ago, due to environmental concerns, Slopes switched from use of spruce to bamboo. The special, high quality bamboo that Slopes now uses is only grown in a remote area of Guangxi Province, China. The bamboo is fast growing, however is sensitive to man-made contaminants including air pollution.

In June of 2011, Slopes hired a new controller who desires to slash costs. The controller is particularly interested in instituting an aggressive JIT system that will result inending inventoriesof all items (including wood and fiberglass) to be nearzero.

You are the assistant controller at Slopes and you possess knowledge of all phases of operations. How might you advise the new controller regarding his/her plans?

2) Suppose that the standard Direct Manufacturing Labor rate is 5 hours of labor per each board produced. This is a long-standing industry standard and has also been used successfully for many years in the past at Slopes. A new production manager is hired and he immediately complains that the standard should beincreasedto 9 hours of labor per each produced board.

You are suspicious as to why the new production manager desires to change the standard.What might be the new production manager's motive? What discussed concept may beapplicable to this situation?

3) The CEO of Slopes desires to increase profits and has stated that effective immediately all department heads will beonlybe evaluated on theiractual performancecompared their respective budgets. Department heads who do not meet their budget numbers will be terminated.

Wanting to comply with the new policy, the foreman of the machining department decided to cut regularly scheduled safety inspections andwas heard commenting, "I really can't be concerned about worker safety, anymore". The Q.C.area manager, concerned about meeting her labor budget, decided to lay off one worker and to make up for the lost resources, has decided to inspect everyothersnowboard produced rather than 100% of produced boards. Thefactory's chief environmental officer is now considering burning the bamboo shavings left over from the manufacturing process rather than recycling them.

Do you agree withCEO'sapproach? What specific concept that was discussed in the course may be applicable to the consequences of this approach?