Abstract:

The paper is a continuation of the article “Principle of Gradation of Difficulty in Management Accountants Education. Example of the Solver Application”, which was presented at the 10th annual International Conference on Education and New Learning Technologies, held in Mallorca in June 2018. In that article the principle of gradation of difficulty was expounded and its application in the “Management accounting” course in the education of M.Sc. students majoring in management at the Faculty of Management, the UTP University of Science and Technology in Bydgoszcz, Poland, was described.

The main aim of the present article is to describe how one can continue the application of the principle of gradation of difficulty in management accountants education by extending the example presented in the first paper. The example described concerned the profit optimization problem solving in a manufacturing company and encompassed three levels of the gradation of difficulties: the market demand constraint (the first level); the market demand constraint, raw material and human working time constraint (the second level); and demands limitation, raw material, human working time and free cash limitation (the third level). In this article the example is extended with the two following levels of constraints: machine hours constraint (internal constraint) and accepted costumer orders (external constraint). Additionally, the use of Solver tool for Break Even Point seeking is explained, and Excel function Sumproduct, which facilitates the simplification of the raw materials, human and machine working time consumption calculation per production plan, is provided in detail.

According to the author, the solver tool application for profit optimisation problem solving demonstrated in the previous and the present articles, is a good example of how the difficulty gradation concept can be used in the management accountancy education.

Keywords:

Gradation of difficulty, management accounting, teaching, spreadsheet, solver.