Sensitivity Analysis and Margin of Safety
Sensitivity analysis is a “what-if” technique managers use to examine how an outcome Will change if the original predicted data are nor achieved or if an underlying assumption changes. The analysis answers questions such as “What will operating income be if the quantity of units sold decreases by 5% from the original prediction?” and “What will operating income be if variable cost per unit increases by 10%?” This helps visualize the possible outcomes that might occur before the company commits to funding a project. For example, companies such as Boeing and Airbus use CVP analysis to evaluate how many airplanes they need to sell in order to recover the multibillion-dollar costs of designing and developing new ones. The managers then do a sensitivity analysis to test how sensitive their conclusions are to different assumptions, such as the size of the market for the airplane, its selling price, and the marker share they think it can capture.