John Deere Component Workвђ™s

John Deere Component Works was a subdivision of John Deere and Company which dealt exclusively with the manufacturing of tractor component parts. By the mid 1980’s, JDCW found that its available excess capacity was increasing. To neutralize this problem JDCW attempted to take advantage of the efficiencies of its newly acquired automatic turning machines by bidding on parts offered from within the company. This lead to a direct bid of 275 of the 635 parts offered by John Deere and Company. Out of the possible 275 parts, JDCW was successful in the bidding of only 58 parts, which happened to be low volume parts. This became a concern for JDCW because its aim was to attain the bids that offered the higher volume parts, as to allow it to take advantage of its machine’s high volume efficiency. In reality, the problem for JDCW was not the number of bids they received, but the alarming discrepancy within its bid prices and that of its competitors. JDCW realized that something was wrong in their accounting system, and decided to review its current cost structures.

The existing cost system is strong in that it is simple and easy to maintain. Overhead allocation was based on direct labor hours, machine hours and material dollars. The use of standard costs allows JDCW to compare actual labor overhead costs with budgeted rates in order to determine the following years’ overhead costs. In fact, the old cost structure worked quite well in the past since the company produced a specialized line of products that was periodically consistent. This