Exercise 12-9
(15 minutes)The company should accept orders first for Product Z, second for ProductX, and third for Product Y. The computations are:
Product X Product Y Product Z
(a)Direct materials required per unit...$24.00$15.00$9.00(b)Cost per pound.............................$3.00$3.00$3.00(c)Pounds required per unit (a) ÷ (b).853(d)Contribution margin per unit..........$32.00$14.00$21.00Contribution margin per pound of materials used (d) ÷ (c)..............$4.00$2.80$7.00Because Product Z uses the least amount of material per unit of the threeproducts, and because it is the most profitable of the three in terms of itsuse of this constrained resource, some students will immediately assumethat this is an infallible relationship. That is, they will assume that the wayto spot the most profitable product is to find the one using the leastamount of the constrained resource. The way to dispel this notion is topoint out that Product X uses more material (the constrained resource)
than does Product Y, but yet it is preferred over Product Y.
The key factor is not how much of a constrained resource a product uses, but rather how much contribution margin the product generates per unit of the constrained resource.