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Fargo Publishing Company serves the elementary and middle school textbook market. Their printing area is divided into eight production centers that employ approximately 250 hourly workers. Although the production workers may be involved in preparing, running, or packaging several different production runs, they are paid for the total hours worked twice a month. Each day the production employees insert their time cards into a box that prints the time of day as they arrive for work and leave work at the end of their shift. The human resource (HR) department checks the time cards on a weekly basis and manually inputs each employee's time into the payroll computer. At the end of each week, the HR department sends a report to the production departmental supervisors to review and correct. The report frequently comes back with several adjustments. The HR department then makes changes to the payroll data based on the notations on the report. Once the changes are entered, the HR department sends an updated report to the cost accounting department and a second copy to the accountant who maintains the general ledger, prints paychecks, and prepares monthly and annual reports. The cost accounting department uses its copy of the report to prepare a monthly labor cost report.
Due to state budget cuts to education, price competition in the elementary and middle school textbook publishing business has increased steadily over the past decade. Although Fargo has been able to maintain its market share, profits have decreased. Labor costs and processes are thought to be the primary cause for the decrease in profits, but management lacks enough information to identify where the higher labor costs and process inefficiencies originate. Therefore, Fargo's management hired a consulting company to analyze their current time-keeping and payroll system and to prepare recommendations to decrease costs and to improve data collection, processing procedures, and controls.
Prepare several comprehensive recommendations to address the problems described. Explain and justify each recommendation.