GMAT考试已于5月4日正式更换题库了。以下是2012年5月的GMAT阅读机经更新，更新日期从5月4日起，澳际留学小编将为您提供最快，最新的GMAT阅读机经。澳际留学祝大家GMAT考试顺利!下文是对阅读第20题的补充。

参考资料：(疑似原文，求鉴定)

　　20传统成本会计

　　Virtually all manufacturing companies use their inventory valuation

　　systems to measure product costs. As discussed earlier, this system,

　　in today&aposs environment of large indirect expenses and product diversity,

　　produces highly distorted product costs. Service companies, who

　　have not had to assign expenses to their products for financial statement

　　purposes, have operated for decades without knowing product

　　costs. They collected costs in functional or responsibility categories

　　but made little fort to assign accurately their operating expenses to

　　their products and customers.

　　At its simplest level, product cost distortions occur in virtually all

　　organizations producing and selling multiple products. An example

　　provides a simple illustration of the sources of the distortion. Consider

　　two factories, both malung pens using identical capital equipment and

　　physical facilities. Plant I is a focused producer that manufactures

　　only blue pens, 1.000.000 units per year. Plant I1 is a full line producer.

　　In addition to producing blue pens, (100.000 per year), it produces

　　a variety of other colors : 100.000 black, 50.000 red, 20.000 green and

　　so on. Plant I1 also produces a wide variety of specialty colors (such

　　as 800 purple pens per year), plus pens that write on a variety of surfaces

　　(flip charts, transparencies, white boards, etc.). All together,

　　Plant 11, like Plant I, produces 1.000.000 pens per year, but with several

　　thousand different color, packaging, and writing surface combinations.

　　Despite the similarity in product, physical facilities, and total output

　　of the two plants, a visitor walking through them would notice

　　dramatic differences. Plant I1 contains many more people : to schedule

　　machines, perform setups, inspect output after each setup, to

　　schedule, receive and inspect incoming materials and packages, to

　　move, count and value inventory, expedite orders, rework dective

　　materials, design and implement engineering change orders, negotiate

　　with vendors, issue purchase orders, and update and program

　　the much larger computer-based information system. Plant I1 also

　　operates with much higher levels of idle time, overtime, inventory,

　　rework, and scrap.

　　Any traditional cost system will assign about 10% of Plant 11&aposs overhead

　　cost to blue pens. Whether indirect costs are assigned based on

　　direct labor-hours, machine-hours, material quantities, or units produced,

　　blue pens represent 10% of the plant&aposs volume of activity and

　　will, therore, receive 10% of the plant&aposs indirect costs. Similarly, a

　　low volume product such as the 800 purple pens produced each year

　　would have .08% (800 divided by 1.000.000) of the plant&aposs indirect

　　costs assigned to it. If a blue and a purple pen had the same labor

　　times, machine processing times, and direct material costs, then the

　　standard cost of the two products would be identical under any traditional

　　cost system.

　　The strategic consequences from using such a cost system can be

　　disastrous. Over time, the market price for blue pens, and for most

　　high-volume standard products, will be determined by focused and ficient

　　producers like Plant I. Managers of Plant I1 will find it difficult

　　to compete in the blue pen market because their reported profit margins

　　in these lines will be low or even negative. The managers of Plant

　　I1 will look for profit growth in their new product lines - designer colors,

　　specialized writing surfaces - where they earn attractive price

　　premiums, perhaps 10 to 20 percent. They will de-emphasize standard

　　commodity-like products where the plant seems uncompetitive, and

　　shift to an expanded line of specialty products with unique features

　　and options, and generally much smaller unit volumes. Of course, scaling

　　back on blue pens and proliferating the product line to replace

　　the lost volumes will create new demands for overhead and support

　　resources, raising costs even further.

　　相关链接：

1.GMAT考试 5月7日更新GMAT阅读机经(十三)

2.GMAT考试 5月7日更新GMAT阅读机经(十一)

3.GMAT阅读提升技巧：如何节省阅读时间

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