Truffle Co makes high quality hand-made chocolate truffles which it sells to a local reta

Truffle Co makes high quality, hand-made chocolate truffles which it sells to a local retailer. All chocolates are made in batches of 16, to fit the standard boxes supplied by the retailer. The standard cost of labour for each batch is $6·00 and the standard labour time for each batch is half an hour. In November, Truffle Co had budgeted production of 24,000 batches; actual production was only 20,500 batches. 12,000 labour hours were used to complete the work and there was no idle time. All workers were paid for their actual hours worked. The actual total labour cost for November was $136,800. The production manager at Truffle Co has no input into the budgeting process.

At the end of October, the managing director decided to hold a meeting and offer staff the choice of either accepting a 5% pay cut or facing a certain number of redundancies. All staff subsequently agreed to accept the 5% pay cut with immediate effect.

At the same time, the retailer requested that the truffles be made slightly softer. This change was implemented immediately and made the chocolates more difficult to shape. When recipe changes such as these are made, it takes time before the workers become used to working with the new ingredient mix, making the process 20% slower for at least the first month of the new operation.

The standard costing system is only updated once a year in June and no changes are ever made to the system outside of this.

Required:

(a) Calculate the total labour rate and total labour efficiency variances for November, based on the standard cost provided above. (4 marks)

(b) Analyse the total labour rate and total labour efficiency variances into component parts for planning and operational variances in as much detail as the information allows. (8 marks)

(c) Assess the performance of the production manager for the month of November. (8 marks)

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