The Sturgeon Bay Yacht Company Case

Sturgeon Bay Yacht Company produces three models of yachts. All are 44 feet long.  One is a standard Fiberglass model with nylon sails and a fixed keel made of lead and fiberglass named the Ste. Marie.  It comes with a standard depth finder, compass and 20 horsepower diesel auxiliary motor.  It sells for $120,000.

The Mackinac model has upgrades with radar, GPS nautical charts, enhanced batteries, and Teflon coated carbon fiber sails. The engine produces 100 horsepower and can run a cabin heater.  It can completely recharge the battery in less than an hour.  The Mackinac sells for $200,000.

The Odawa model is a custom-made with a deck made from teak and a cabin constructed from special woods. The sails are made from the traditional flax based canvass.   The hull is from specially cut oak from local forests.  It has the look of a vessel constructed in 1850 by a quality shipyard with 2018 comforts and safety.  The Odawa sells for $800,000.  Workers who build the Odawa are specialty craftsmen.  They earn twice the hourly rate of those working on the two standard models.  Note: Labor rate is fully loaded for benefits.

Most of Sturgeon Bay Yacht's sales come from the Ste. Marie and the Mackinac, but sales of the Odawa model have been growing.  Below is the company's sales, production, and cost information for last year:

Manufacturing overhead* is made up as follows:

*These manufacturing overhead costs are fixed in nature: they do not vary with the volume of manufacturing activity.

The company allocates overhead costs using the traditional method. Its activity base is unit volume. The predetermined overhead rate, based on 170 total yachts, is $27,000 per yacht ($4,590,000 ÷ 170 yachts). Marlin Perkins, president of Sturgeon Bay Yacht, is concerned that the traditional cost-allocation system the company is using may not be generating accurate information and that the selling price of the custom Odawa may not be covering its true cost.

Questions:

A. The cost-allocation system Sturgeon Bay has been using allocates over 88% of overhead costs to the Ste. Marie and the Kennebunk because 88% of yachts produced were these two models. How much overhead was allocated, in total, to each of the three models last year? Discuss why this might not be an accurate way to assign overhead costs to products.

B. Sturgeon Bay's production manager proposes allocating overhead by direct labor hours instead since the different models require different amounts of labor. How much overhead would be allocated to each yacht (per unit and in total) under this method? Show all supporting calculations.

C. How would the use of more than one cost pool improve Sturgeon Bay Yacht's cost allocation?

D. Sturgeon Bay Yacht's controller developed the following data for use in activity-based costing:

Use activity-based costing to allocate the costs of overhead per unit and in total to each yacht. Show all supporting calculations. It is appropriate to use an excel document to do your computations in Excel.

E. Calculate the cost of one custom Odawa yacht using activity-based costing.

F. Why are the costs different between the traditional method and the activity-based method? 

G. At the current selling price, is the company covering its true cost of production of the Odawa? Briefly discuss.

H. What should be the price that Sturgeon Bay Yacht Company charges for the Odawa? Assume that the Odawa should have the same profit margin as the Mackinac. Show all calculations.

I. What should Sturgeon Bay Yacht Co. do if the quantity of the Odawa yachts sold at the new price falls to 10 per year?

J. What should Sturgeon Bay Yacht Co. do about the situation if the price of the Odawa cannot exceed $800,000?

K. At a selling price of $800,000 each, what is the breakeven unit volume for the Odawa? 

L. What are the lessons learned from this case?