Target Costing; Review of Chapter 11 Morrow Company is a large manufacturer of auto parts for automakers and parts distributors. Although Morrow has plants throughout the world, most are in North America. Morrow is known for the quality of its parts and for the reliability of its operations. Customers receive their orders in a timely manner and there are no errors in the shipment or billing of these orders. For these reasons, Morrow has prospered in a business that is very competitive, with competitors such as Delphi, Visteon, and others.
Morrow just received an order for 100 auto parts from National Motors Corp., a major auto manufacturer. National proposed a $1,500 selling price per part. Morrow usually earned 20 per cent operating margin as a percent of sales. Morrow recently decided to use target costing in pricing its products. An examination of the production costs by the engineers and accountants showed that this part was assigned a standard full cost of $1,425 per part (this includes $1,000 production, $200 marketing, and $225 general and administration costs per part). Morrow's Value Assessment Group (VAG) undertook a cost reduction program for this part. Two production areas that were investigated were the defective unit rate and the tooling costs. The $1,000 production costs included a normal defective cost of $85 per part. Group leaders suggested that production changes could reduce defec- tive cost to $25 per part.
Forty-five tools were used to make the auto part. The group discovered that the number of tools could be reduced to 30 and less expensive tools could be used on this part to meet National's product specifications. These changes saved an additional $105 of production cost per part. By studying other problem areas, the group found that general and administration costs could be reduced by $50 per unit through use of electronic data interchange with suppliers and just-in-time inventory management.
In addition, Morrow's sales manager told the group that National might be willing to pay a higher selling price because of Morrow's quality reputation and reliability. He believed National's proposed price was a starting point for negotiations. Of course, National had made the same offer to some of Morrow's competitors.
Required
1. What should be Morrow's target cost per auto part? Explain.
2. As a result of the Value Engineering Group's efforts, determine Morrow's estimated cost for the auto part. Will Morrow meet the target cost for the part? Do you recommend that Morrow take the National offer? Explain your reasons.