Sometimes the management accountant must reengineer the firm's old job costing system to sustain the competitive advantage. One useful article that reported a small textile knitting and converting company's controller, Richard H. Snyder, successfully implemented a spreadsheet-based job costing system to reverse the company's $5 million loss on $65 million in sales revenue to a $3 million profit on just $32 million in sales revenue, was published in May 1999 issue of Strategic Finance magazine at the link below.
Required: Review the article and answer the following questions.
What problems did the author discover when he conducted his initial interviews with the company in early 1990?
Describe the company's old financial costing system and identify its weaknesses as well as business operating and profit consequences caused by its poor costing system.
What are major impacts of the company's new computerized costing system on its business operations, product prices and quality, and company's profit?
What are general principles learned by the author for changing or reengineering a company's costing system?
