Drew Castello, general manager of Sunflower Manufacturing, was frustrated. He wanted the budgeted results, and his staff was not getting them to him fast enough. Castello decided to pay a visit to the accounting office, where Jeff Hollingsworth was supposed to be working on the reports. Hollingsworth had recently been hired to update the accounting system and speed up the reporting process.
“What’s taking so long?” Castello asked. “When am I going to get the variance reports?” Hollingsworth sighed and attempted to explain the problem. “Some of the variances appear to be way off. Either we have a serious problem in production, or there is an error in the spreadsheet. I want to recheck the spreadsheet before I distribute the report.” Castello pulled up a chair, and the two men went through the spreadsheet together. The formulas in the spreadsheet were correct and showed a large unfavorable direct labor efficiency variance. It was time for Castello and Hollingsworth to do some investigating.
After looking at the time records, Hollingsworth pointed out that it was unusual that every employee in the production area recorded exactly eight hours each day in direct labor. Did they not take breaks? Was no one ever five minutes late getting back from lunch? What about clean-up time between jobs or at the end of the day?
Castello began to observe the production laborers and noticed several disturbing items. One employee was routinely late for work, but his time card always showed him clock