Custom Manufacturing
The client was a large diversified North American manufacturer of retail display systems. They provide a catalogue of products as well as turnkey installation of complete retail environments. Pricing for this kind of business is complex and competition for business is intense.
We provided a multi-plant, integrated, automated profitability reporting framework that delivered summary and detailed actual revenue and costs, by division, customer, product, and supplier. This included a workflow component for manual data collection and significant integration into the company's manufacturing, accounting, and sales & order processing applications.
The resulting repository of costing and profitability information ensured that sales quotes provide an appropriate margin and a competitive advantage.
This project was the basis for many illustrations and related exercises in “Introduction to Management Accounting”. In Accounting education this text is a fundamental resource.