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The Cost Of A Cost Analysis

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A cost analysis can be conducted in order by companies in order to estimate their cost when making decisions (Douglas, 2012). Managers can various methods to analyze costs for decision making purposes these are total variable cost, average variable cost, marginal costs (Douglas, 2012). In addition the company can use profit maximization and marginal revenue to help make decisions (Douglas, 2012). This paper will analyze two different scenarios and use various methods to help them make the decisions at hand. The first scenario will analyze a pizza company. William, owner, is trying to increase outputs while minimizing their costs. It has been determined that four ovens cost the company $1,000. In addition, he has supplied the following …show more content…

This makes the most efficient number of employees to be at six because this is the highest return between employee numbers zero and eight. If William was to pay each employee $500 per week, he could determine his variable cost by taking their pay per week by the number of employees. Once this is computed he can add it to the fixed cost to determine his total cost. The marginal cost can be computed by taking the incremental total cost divided by the incremental output (Douglas, 2014).
Employees Variable Cost ($) Fixed Cost ($) Total Cost ($) Incremental Cost ($) Pizza Produced Incremental Output Marginal Cost ($)
0 0 1,000 1,000 0
1 500 1,000 1,500 500 75 75 6.67
2 1,000 1,000 2,000 500 180 105 4.76
3 1,500 1,000 2,500 500 360 180 2.78
4 2,000 1,000 3,000 500 600 240 2.08
5 2,500 1,000 3,500 500 900 300 1.67
6 3,000 1,000 4,000 500 1140 240 2.08
7 3,500 1,000 4,500 500 1260 120 4.17
8 4,000 1,000 5,000 500 1360 100 5.00 This shows that to minimize their marginal cost they should have five employees because this marginal cost is $1.67 and when you hit six employees their marginal cost increase with each added employee. Marginal productivity declines as companies hire more employees after a certain level. This is based on the law of diminishing returns which is if a company continues to add variable inputs to its fixed inputs in the production process,

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