We have a division of labor between my wife and me. She does_________ and I do_________ . ()
A.cooking … eating
B.a cooking … an eating
C.the cooking … the eating
D.cook…eat
A.cooking … eating
B.a cooking … an eating
C.the cooking … the eating
D.cook…eat
—_______________________________
—We have three major divisions Operations, Sales and Marketing, Finance and Administration.
A、How many departments do we have?
B、Which division are you in?
C、Which department shows the best?
A.How many PE classes do we have
B.o you like PE classes
C.When do we have PE classes
Section B – TWO questions ONLY to be attempted
Perkin manufactures electronic components for export worldwide, from factories in Ceeland, for use in smartphones and hand held gaming devices. These two markets are supplied with similar components by two divisions, Phones Division (P) and Gaming Division (G). Each division has its own selling, purchasing, IT and research and development functions, but separate IT systems. Some manufacturing facilities, however, are shared between the two divisions.
Perkin’s corporate objective is to maximise shareholder wealth through innovation and continuous technological improvement in its products. The manufacturers of smartphones and gaming devices, who use Perkin’s components, update their products frequently and constantly compete with each other to launch models which are technically superior.
Perkin has a well-established incremental budgeting process. Divisional managers forecast sales volumes and costs months in advance of the budget year. These divisional budgets are then scrutinised by the main board, and revised significantly by them in line with targets they have set for the business. The finalised budgets are often approved after the start of the accounting year. Under pressure to deliver consistent returns to institutional shareholders, the board does not tolerate failure by either division to achieve the planned net profit for the year once the budget is approved. Last year’s results were poor compared to the annual budget. Divisional managers, who are appraised on the financial performance of their own division, have complained about the length of time that the budgeting process takes and that the performance of their divisions could have been better but was constrained by the budgets which were set for them.
In P Division, managers had failed to anticipate the high popularity of a new smartphone model incorporating a large screen designed for playing games, and had not made the necessary technical modifications to the division’s own components. This was due to the high costs of doing so, which had not been budgeted for. Based on the original sales forecast, P Division had already committed to manufacturing large quantities of the existing version of the component and so had to heavily discount these in order to achieve the planned sales volumes.
A critical material in the manufacture of Perkin’s products is silver, which is a commodity which changes materially in price according to worldwide supply and demand. During the year supplies of silver were reduced significantly for a short period of time and G Division paid high prices to ensure continued supply. Managers of G Division were unaware that P Division held large inventories of silver which they had purchased when the price was much lower.
Initially, G Division accurately forecasted demand for its components based on the previous years’ sales volumes plus the historic annual growth rate of 5%. However, overall sales volumes were much lower than budgeted. This was due to a fire at the factory of their main customer, which was then closed for part of the year. Reacting to this news, managers at G Division took action to reduce costs, including closing one of the three R&D facilities in the division.
However, when the customer’s factory reopened, G Division was unwilling to recruit extra staff to cope with increased demand; nor would P Division re-allocate shared manufacturing facilities to them, in case demand increased for its own products later in the year. As a result, Perkin lost the prestigious preferred supplier status from their main customer who was unhappy with G Division’s failure to effectively respond to the additional demand. The customer had been forced to purchase a more expensive, though technically superior, component from an alternative manufacturer.
The institutional shareholders’ representative, recently appointed to the board, has asked you as a performance management expert for your advice. ‘We need to know whether Perkin’s budgeting process is appropriate for the business, and how this contributed to last year’s poor performance’, she said, ‘and more importantly, how do we need to change the process to prevent this happening in the future, such as a move to beyond budgeting.’
Required:
(a) Evaluate the weaknesses in Perkin’s current budgeting system and whether it is suitable for the environment in which Perkin operates. (13 marks)
(b) Evaluate the impact on Perkin of moving to beyond budgeting. (12 marks)
As long as the resources we consumed each year came primarily from within our own boundaries, this was largely an internal matter. But as our resources come more and more from the outside world, "outsiders" are going to have some stay over the rate at which and terms under which we consume. We will no longer be able to think in terms of "our" resources and "their" resources, but only of common resources.
As Americans consuming such a disproportionate share of the world's resources, we have to question whether or not we can continue our pursuit of super affluence in a world of scarcity. We are now reaching the point where we must carefully examine the presumed link between our level of well-being and the level of material goods consumed. If you have only one crust of bread, then an additional crust of bread doesn't make that much different. In the eyes of most of the world today, Americans have their loaf of bread and are asking for still more. People elsewhere are beginning to ask why. This is the question we're going to have to answer, whether we're trying to persuade countries to step up their exports of oil to us or trying to convince them that we ought to be permitted to maintain our share of the world fish catch.
The prospect of a scarcity of, and competition for, the world's resources require that we reexamine the way in which we relate to the rest of the world. It means we find ways of cutting back on resource consumption that is dependent on the resources and cooperation of other countries. We cannot expect people in these countries to concern themselves with our worsening energy and food shortages unless we demonstrate some concern for the hunger, illiteracy and disease that are diminishing life for them.
The writer warns Americans that ______.
A.their excessive consumption has caused world resource exhaustion
B.they are confronted with the problem of how to obtain more material goods
C.their unfair share of the world's resources should give way to proper division among countries
D.they have to discard their cars for lack of fossil fuel in the world
A.to which
B.which
C.with which
D.in which
(b) The management of Division C has identified the need to achieve cost savings in order to become more
competitive. They have decided that an analysis and investigation of quality costs into four sub-categories will
provide a focus for performance measurement and improvement.
Required:
Identify the FOUR sub-categories into which quality costs can be analysed and provide examples (which
must relate to Division C) of each of the four sub-categories of quality cost that can be investigated in order
that overall cost savings might be achieved and hence the performance improved. (8 marks)
A new study suggests that contrary to most surveys, people are actually more stressed at home than at work. Researchers measured people’s cortisol, which is a stress marker, while they were at work and while they were at home and found it higher at what is supposed to be a place of refuge.
“Further contradicting conventional wisdom, we found that women as well as men have lower levels of stress at work than at home, ” writes one of the researchers, Sarah Damske. In fact women even say they feel better at work, she notes.“ It is men, not women, who report being happier at home than at work. ”Another surprise is that findings hold true for both those with children and without, but more so for nonparents. This is why people who work outside the home have better health.
What the study doesn’t measure is whether people are still doing work when they’re at home, whether it is household work or work brought home from the office. For many men, the end of the workday is a time to kick back. For women who stay home, they never get to leave the office. And for women who work outside the home, they often are playing catch-up-with-household tasks. With the blurring of roles, and the fact that the home front lags well behind the workplace a making adjustments for working women, it’s not surprising that women are more stressed at home.
But it’s not just a gender thing. At work, people pretty much know what they’re supposed to be doing: working, marking money, doing the tasks they have to do in order to draw an income. The bargain is very pure: Employee puts in hours of physical or mental labor and employee draws out life-sustaining moola.
On the home front, however, people have no such clarity. Rare is the household in which the division of labor is so clinically and methodically laid out. There are a lot of tasks to be done, there are inadequate rewards for most of them. Your home colleagues-your family-have no clear rewards for their labor; they need to be talked into it, or if they’re teenagers, threatened with complete removal of all electronic devices. Plus, they’re your family. You cannot fire your family. You never really get to go home from home.
So it’s not surprising that people are more stressed at home. Not only are the tasks apparently infinite, the co-workers are much harder to motivate.
21.According to Paragraph 1,most previous surveys found that home_____
[A] offered greater relaxation than the workplace
[B] was an ideal place for stress measurement
[C] generated more stress than the workplace
[D] was an unrealistic place for relaxation
22. According to Damaske, who are likely to be the happiest at home?
[A] Childless wives
[B] Working mothers
[C] Childless husbands
[D] Working fathers
23.The blurring of working women's roles refers to the fact that_____
[A] it is difficult for them to leave their office
[B] their home is also a place for kicking back
[C] there is often much housework left behind
[D] they are both bread winners and housewives
24.The word“moola”(Line4,Para4)most probably means_____
[A] skills
[B] energy
[C] earnings
[D] nutrition
25.The home front differs from the workplace in that_____
[A] division of labor at home is seldom clear-cut
[B] home is hardly a cozier working environment
[C] household tasks are generally more motivating
[D] family labor is often adequately rewarded
The source of the sun' s inconstancy is magnetism. Professor William Livingston has developed new theories about its magnetic nature.
"We don' t yet know what causes sun spots, "he says, "but we now think they ' re areas of high level magnetism that come up from the sun' s interior. So strong is their magnetic pull that the highly ionized gas nearby is not able to transmit energy out. "As a result these areas send out less heat and light and thus appear from Earth to be almost dark irregular surface patches.
Sun spot activity generally fluctuates in steady, 11-year cycled. Scientists have long formed the o pinion that as the size and number of sun spots increased, the overall energy sent out by the sun would de crease. Indeed, recent studies confirmed it, revealing that during peak periods of sun spot activity, the Earth experiences a small drop that can be seen clearly in received solar energy.
Could such a small drop in energy have an effect here on earth? Perhaps some scientists think the world temperature could fall by' as much as 0.2 during periods of high solar magnetism.., enough to cause significant fluctuations in weather patterns.
According to the passage, it is believed that the sun ______ .
A.moves in a quick but steady way year after year
B.sends out less and less heat and light with each passing year
C.radiates the same amount of light every year
D.might have a strong influence on the weather patterns
4 The Better Agriculture Group (BAG), which has a divisional structure, produces a range of products for the farming
industry. Divisions B and C are two of its divisions. Division B sells a fertiliser product (BF) to customers external to
BAG. Division C produces a chemical (CC) which it could transfer to Division B for use in the manufacture of its
product BF. However, Division C could also sell some of its output of chemical CC to external customers of BAG.
An independent external supplier to The Better Agriculture Group has offered to supply Division B with a chemical
which is equivalent to component CC. The independent supplier has a maximum spare capacity of 60,000 kilograms
of the chemical which it is willing to make available (in total or in part) to Division B at a special price of $55 per
kilogram.
Forecast information for the forthcoming period is as follows:
Division B:
Production and sales of 360,000 litres of BF at a selling price of $120 per litre.
Variable conversion costs of BF will amount to $15 per litre.
Fixed costs are estimated at $18,000,000.
Chemical (CC) is used at the rate of 1 kilogram of CC per 4 litres of product BF.
Division C:
Total production capacity of 100,000 kilograms of chemical CC.
Variable costs will be $50 per kilogram of CC.
Fixed costs are estimated at $2,000,000.
Market research suggests that external customers of BAG are willing to take up sales of 40,000 kilograms of CC at a
price of $105 per kilogram. The remaining 60,000 kilograms of CC could be transferred to Division B for use in
product BF. Currently no other market external to BAG is available for the 60,000 kilograms of CC.
Required:
(a) (i) State the price/prices per kilogram at which Division C should offer to transfer chemical CC to Division
B in order that the maximisation of BAG profit would occur if Division B management implement rational
sourcing decisions based on purely financial grounds.
Note: you should explain the basis on which Division B would make its decision using the information
available, incorporating details of all relevant calculations. (6 marks)