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To illustrate the benefits of a JIT system, consider Paula Elliot, a student at a large urban university. She helps support herself by selling flowers. Three days each week, Paula drives to a florist, purchases 25 single stem roses, returns to the school, and sells the flowers to individuals from a location on a local street corner. She pays $2 per rose and sells each one for $3. Some days she does not have enough flowers to meet customer demand. Other days, she must discard one or two unsold flowers; she believes quality is important and refuses to sell flowers that are not fresh. During May, she purchased 300 roses and sold 280. She calculated her driving cost to be $45. Exhibit 1.12 displays Paula’s May income statement.
After studying just-in-time inventory systems in her managerial accounting class, Paula decided to apply the concepts to her small business. She reengineered her distribution system by purchasing her flowers from a florist within walking distance of her sales location. She had considered purchasing from this florist earlier but had rejected the idea because the florist’s regular selling price of $2.25 per rose was too high. After learning about most-favored customer status, she developed a strategy to get a price reduction. By guaranteeing that she would buy at least 30 roses per week, she was able to convince the local florist to match her current cost of $2.00 per rose. The local florist agreed that she could make purchases in batches of any size so long as the total amounted to at least 30 per week. Under this arrangement, Paula was able to buy roses just in time to meet customer demand. Each day she purchased a small number of flowers. When she ran out, she simply returned to the florist for additional ones. The JIT system also enabled Paula to eliminate the cost of the nonvalue-added activity of driving to her former florist. Customer satisfaction actually improved because no one was ever turned away because of the lack of inventory. In June, Paula was able to buy and sell 310 roses with no waste and no driving expense. The June income statement is shown in Exhibit 1.13.
Paula was ecstatic about her $115 increase in profitability ($310 in June – $195 in May = $115 increase), but she was puzzled about the exact reasons for the change. She had saved $40 (20 flowers × $2 each) by avoiding waste and eliminated $45 of driving expenses. These two factors explained only $85 ($40 waste + $45 driving expense) of the $115 increase. What had caused the remaining $30 ($115 – $85) increase in profitability? Paula asked her accounting professor to help her identify the remaining $30 difference. The professor explained that May sales had suffered from lost opportunities. Recall that under the earlier inventory system, Paula had to turn away some prospective customers because she sold out of flowers before all customers were served. Sales increased from 280 roses in May to 310 roses in June. A likely explanation for the 30 unit difference (310 – 280) is that customers who would have purchased flowers in May were unable to do so because of a lack of availability. May’s sales suffered from the lost opportunity to earn a gross margin of $1 per flower on 30 roses, a $30 opportunity costCost of lost opportunities such as revenue forgone because of insufficient inventory.. This opportunity cost is the missing link in explaining the profitability difference between May and June. The total $115 difference consists of (1) $40 savings from waste elimination, (2) $45 savings from eliminating driving expense, and (3) opportunity cost of $30. The subject of opportunity cost has widespread application and is discussed in more depth in subsequent chapters of the text.
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