ACB1020 Accounting in Business Due date: 11:55pm Monday 16th May 2022 (Week 11). Submission Moodle Weighting: 15% Format: Essay in Word document or PDF Word limit: 1000 words (+/-10%) [This does not include headings and references] Referencing: In-text and a list of references (APA 7th style) Advanced Kitchen Factory produces and supplies small electrical appliances to retail department stores. The CEO, Leah Lee, has become increasingly concerned about the recent decreases in profits. She is advised by the senior executives that the operating expenses have already been at their lowest and therefore, cannot be reduced. Leah understands that in order to improve profits, she needs to consider increasing sales revenues and/or reducing costs of sales. Leah first calls on Lucas Huynh, the general manager of production, to discuss what actions he would recommend to reduce production costs. Lucas claims that due to labour shortages, costs of production have been increased significantly. He advises Leah that, to cut costs, Advanced Kitchen Factory would need switch to less expensive suppliers for some of their components and at the same time, they would need to buy from these new suppliers in large quantities to take full advantages of all trade discounts. Leah then calls in the sales manager, Bradley Schubert, for his suggestions on how to increase sales revenues. Bradley suggests that this can be done by increasing average selling prices and imposing minimum order requirements for both existing and new customers. Leah calls on you as a consultation to give her advice. She tells you that she has been at a recent seminar where they were talking about something called a “balanced scorecard”. Individual Assignment Two 2 You are required to explain in details to Ms Leah Lee: 1. Both financial and non-financial risks and rewards associated with each of those changes proposed by the general manager of production and the sales manager. 2. How the balanced scorecard could be used to shape the strategic direction of Advanced Kitchen Factory. (Please focus on the current problems at Advanced Kitchen Factory and how the proposed changes fit into the four perspectives of the balanced scorecard). 3. One potential advantage and one potential problem that Advanced Kitchen Factory might encounter in implementing the balanced scorecard. Grading: Your submission will be graded based on how clearly it addresses all of the requirements outlined above. Please refer to the ‘Individual Assignment Two – Marking guide’ for the marking criteria. A few things to note: 1. Essay structure: You need to have an introduction, body paragraphs and a conclusion in your essay. Executive summary is not needed. You can have as many paragraphs as you wish. I recommend you to use headings to make the structure of your essay clearer. 2. Word count: Headings, in-text citations and reference list are excluded from the word count. You can have between 900 – 1100 words. You will be penalised if the word count exceeds 1100 words. 3. Referencing: There is no minimum number of references required. However, it is very important to ensure that you correctly cite all the sources of information you use in your essay. Information sources do not have to be academic or peer-reviewed. You can also use information from credible sources. If you use information from lecture materials, please remember to reference them too. Ellinor Allen and TK Thiagarajah are the two co-authors of all lecture materials. Please use the year 2021 for referencing purpose. Please visit this link for information on Monash APA7th referencing. 3 4. Assignment coversheet: You do not need to upload the assignment coversheet. 5. Use of Turnitin: Please carefully check the similarity score of your essay before submission. Plagiarised responses will be heavily penalised. 6. Special consideration: If you would like to apply for special consideration, please visit this link. 7. Late submission: A late penalty (10% per day late) will be applied to all late submissions without an approved special consideration application.
