Jake Miille has just joined the Ciudad Juarez factory (text example) as the new production manager. He was pleased to see the company uses activity-based costing. Miille believes he can reduce production costs if he reduces the number of machine setups. He has spent the past month working with purchasing and sales to better coordinate raw material arrivals and the anticipated demand for the company’s products. In March, he plans to produce 1,000 mountain bikes and 200 racing bikes. Miille believes that with his efficient production scheduling he can reduce the number of setups for both mountain and racing bikes by about 50 percent.

a. Refer to Exhibit 3.5. Compute the amount of overhead allocated to each product line— mountain bikes and racing bikes—assuming annual setups are reduced by approximately 50 percent. Assume the number of machine setups in March is seven setups for mountain bikes and 15 setups for racing bikes. Assume the overhead costs of setting up machines decrease proportionately with the reduction in the number of setups; thus, the setup rate remains at $2,000 per setup. All other overhead costs will remain the same.

b. What information did activity-based costing provide that enabled Jake Miille to pursue reducing overhead costs? In general, what are the advantages of activity-based costing over the traditional volume-based allocation methods? What are the disadvantages?