Competitive Case Analysis Of Wilkerson's Company

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY TABLE OF CONTENTS
Executive Summary 1
Introduction 3
Competitive Situation 4
Variable Costing 5
Existing Costing System 6
Diagram ABC 8
Activity Based Costing & Profitability 9
Conclusion 14
Bibliography 15

INTRODUCTION

COMPETITIVE SITUATION
Firstly, here is a brief description of what Wilkerson Company specializes in. According to our case study and various online sources, Wilkerson manufactures and markets a complete line of compressed air treatment components and control products.
Now, like any other company out there in the corporate world, they all come across a point in business where they face a competitive situation, due to either their product line, pricing, or their financial system. According to our

Nonetheless, competitors of Wilkerson overlooked the opportunity to make profit for themselves in flow controllers, due to the fact that Wilkerson has increased the product price by 10% without losing any business.
President of the Wilkerson Company was discussing the business’s operating results with his financial controller and manufacturing manager. Reason for this meeting was because; competitors were now reducing the price of their pumps, posing a threat to Wilkerson’s major product line. Since pumps where a commodity product for Wilkerson, they had no other choice but to match the competitors price in order to maintain volume. Unfortunately, Wilkerson’s price cuts led to a decline in their company profits, especially in the pump line.
However, the company had now started with a unique design for valves that is could produce to tolerances that were better than any industry. Due to this, Wilkerson established a loyal customer base. Wilkerson decided to introduce their existing labor skills and machining equipment from producing valves to produce pumps and flow controllers. Which eventually established a major presence in the high volume pump product line and a more customized flow controller

Therefore on that basis, all products, including pumps would be generating substantial contribution to overhead and profits.
Therefore, given the overhead allocation problems, Wilkerson’s best bet would be to adopt the variable costing method for various reasons, as follows:
1. This cost concept provides a better understanding of the effect of fixed costs on the net profits, due to the fact that total fixed cost for the period is shown on the income statement.
2. Also, various methods of controlling costs such as standard costing system and flexible budgets have close relation with the variable costing system, in turn making it easy to use those methods.
3. Companies using variable costing system are able to prepare income statement in contribution margin format that provides necessary information for cost volume profit (CVP) analysis. On the flip side, this data cannot be directly obtained from a traditional income statement prepared under absorption costing