Week 4 of Strategic Cost Management is the day to present the case

Week 4, Tuesday the 14th of August is going to be my turn to present the analysis of "stalpaper cup company",HBS case. As in my previous post a team of 7 dudes and dudettes have to analyse the case and one has to present. Yesterday we had the 1 st group meeting having a crack at the case. Before the meeting I had gone through the case enough number of times, and found the hidden facts and give aways. Partly because of the subjects appeals to me and seem to like going the extra yard with cases.

I was anxious about the level of analysis which my mates have done. The 3 pages case with 4 tables filled with figures goes something like this "The president of stalcup paper company" is concerned about unit cost rising between the 2 years 1982 and 1984. So he calls up for a meeting between his 'cost accounting manager' and dept manager. The cost accounting manager and dept manager contradicts with the increase and decrease of the unit cost.

The cost accounting manager allocates overheads of depeartment based on "Direct labor" as the cost driver (which usually gives a distorted unit price), and the dept.manager disgrees with the method and argues cost should be allocated based on "cents per pound" -based on output. (which is actually the efficient method).. There are figures and a number of twists apart from this in the case.

I found our first group meeting quite interesting, half of the communication was in chinese as my chinese colleagues analysed the case skimming through the pages, with two indians who knew not even the "A" of chinese (me and another dude). They sometimes bring ideas and new ways of thinking. Its pretty encouraging to see all pooling in, we consulted prof axel on couple of things but he added nothing more than what we already analysed. "You guys are on the right track there is nothing much i can assist with right now" he said....yeah the challenge is up on tuesday.