Venazio Products Uses a Standard Costing System to Assist in the Evaluation

question 31

Essay

Venazio Products uses a standard costing system to assist in the evaluation of operations. The company has had considerable employee difficulties in recent months, so much so that management has hired a new production supervisor (Ralph Moreno). Moreno has been on the job for six months and has seemingly brought order to an otherwise chaotic situation.
The vice-president of manufacturing recently commented that "Moreno has really done the trick. Ralph's team-building/morale-boosting exercises have truly brought things under control." The vice-president's comments were based on both a plant tour, where he observed a contented work force, and review of a performance report that showed a total labor variance of $14,000F. This variance is truly outstanding, given that it is less than 2% of the company's budgeted labor cost. Additional data follow.
· Total completed production amounted to 20,000 units.

· A review of the firm's standard cost records found that each completed unit requires 2.75 hours of labor at $14 per hour. Venazio's production actually required 42,000 labor hours at a total cost of $756,000.
Required:
A. As judged by the information contained in the performance report, should the vice-president be concerned about the company's labor variances? Why?
B. Calculate Venazio's direct-labor variances.
C. On the basis of your answers to requirement "B," should Venazio be concerned about its labor situation? Why?
D. Briefly analyze and explain the direct-labor variances.

---

Definitions:

Purely Competitive

A purely competitive market is one in which there are many buyers and sellers, all trading homogeneous products, with no single entity able to control the market price.

Market

A virtual or physical place where buyers and sellers come together to trade goods, services, or financial instruments.

Allocative Efficiency

A state of the economy in which resources are allocated in a way that maximizes the overall benefit to society, with goods and services produced at their highest-valued uses.

Purely Competitive

A market format where numerous small companies offer an identical product with no barriers to entering or leaving the market, resulting in firms accepting the market price as given.