Option #1: Variance Analysis and Benchmarking

Your supervisor has asked you to prepare some calculations based on the company’s data and then research publicly available similar competitor information to see how your company is performing within the industry. Your company, CarryIt Inc., produces mass quantity, inexpensive tote bags for promotional marketing purposes, which is a very competitive business.

Here is the available data for your company:

• Labor hours .25;
• Labor rate $11.75/hour;
• Materials input .5 yds. fabric;
• Materials price $1.50/yd.; and
• Variable overhead rate $5.00 per direct labor hour.

You are also able to find an industry profile report via a Dun & Bradstreet database that has selected data from a few other companies in similar businesses as well as some industry statistics.

Here’s the data available:

For your task, in Microsoft Excel, compute the following measures:

1. Total variable cost per unit for CarryIt, the competitors, and the industry average.
2. What is the percentage of the total for each component (materials, labor, and variable overhead)?
3. Assume industry data is your benchmark. What are the price and efficiency variances for direct materials and direct labor for each company?
4. What is the percentage over standard by company and by variance?

Below the computations in Excel, please summarize your observations about how CarryIt’s performance stacks up to its competition from the benchmarking exercise in 2-3 well written paragraphs. Include suggestions for areas of improvement and comments on areas where the company does well.

Submit your responses in an Excel spreadsheet, neatly organized. Your paper must be formatted according to CSU-Global Guide to Writing and APA Requirements (Links to an external site.). Reference Lynda.com in the CSU-Global Library (Links to an external site.) for Microsoft Excel tutorials or use the Excel Tutorials link found in the classroom if assistance is needed.

Review the Module 6 Critical Thinking Rubric for full details on how you will be graded on this assignment.