Sunshine Valley Meat Company Produces One of the Best Sausage

Essay

Sunshine Valley Meat Company produces one of the best sausage products in Pennsylvania. The company's controller compiled the following information by analyzing the accounting records:
1. Meat costs the company $3.25 per pound of sausage produced.
2. Compensation of production employees is $2.25 per pound of sausage produced.
3. Supervisory salaries total $23,000 per month.
4. The company incurs utility costs of $9,000 per month plus $0.35 per pound of sausage produced.
5. Insurance and property taxes average $6,400 per month.
Required:
A. Classify each cost as variable, fixed, or semivariable.
B. Write a formula to express the behavior of the firm's production costs. (Use the form Y = a + bX, where X denotes the quantity of sausage produced.)