The Foster Insurance Company developed standard times for processing claims. When a claim was received at the processing center, it was first reviewed and classified as simple or complex. The standard time for processing was: simple claim - 36 mins
complex claim - 1.25 hrs
Employees were expected to be productive 7.5 hrs per day. Compensation costs were $135 per day per employee. During July, which had 20 working days, the following number of claims were processed:
simple claims - 3,000 processed
complex claims - 960 processed
REQUIRED
a. Calculate the number of workers that should have been available to process July claims.
b. Assume that 23 workers were actually available throughout the month of july. calculate a labor efficiency variance expressed as both a number of workers and a dollar amount for the month.

Anewspaper boy is trying to perfect his business in order to maximize the money he can save for a new car. daily paper sales are normally distributed, with a mean of 100 and standard deviation of 10. he sells papers for $0.50 and pays $0.30 for them. unsold papers are trashed with no salvage value. how many papers should he order each day and what % of the time will he experience a stockout? are there any drawbacks to the order size proposed and how could the boy address such issues?

In the fall, jay thompson decided to live in a university dormitory. he signed a dorm contract under which he was obligated to pay the room rent for the full college year. one clause stated that if he moved out during the year, he could sell his dorm contract to another student who would move into the dormitory as his replacement. the dorm cost was $5000 for the two semesters, which jay had already paid a month after he moved into the dorm, he decided he would prefer to live in an apartment. that week, after some searching for a replacement to fulfill his dorm contract, jay had two offers. one student offered to move in immediately and to pay jay $300 per month for the eight remaining months of the school year. a second student offered to move in the second semester and pay $2500 to jay. jay estimates his food cost per month is $500 if he lives in the dorm and $450 if he lives in an apartment with three other students. his share of the apartment rent and utilities will be $404 per month. assume each semester is 4.5 months long. disregard the small differences in the timing of the disbursements or receipts. what is the cost of the cheapest alternative?

Rossdale co. stock currently sells for $68.91 per share and has a beta of 0.88. the market risk premium is 7.10 percent and the risk-free rate is 2.91 percent annually. the company just paid a dividend of $3.57 per share, which it has pledged to increase at an annual rate of 3.25 percent indefinitely. what is your best estimate of the company's cost of equity?