参考答案：The production manager is subject to external pressures which appear beyond his control. The size of the security card has to fit the reader of that card and if the industry specification changes there is nothing that he can do about that. This is, then, a ‘planning’ error and should not form part of any assessment of his performance.Equally if world-wide oil prices increase (and hence plastic prices) then the production manager cannot control that. This would be allocated as a planning error and ignored in an assessment of his performance.The performance of the production manager should be based on the operational variances (and any relevant qualitative factors). The decision to use a new supplier ‘cost’ an extra $A,EGE in price terms. On the face of it this is, at least potentially, a poor performance. However, the manager seems to have agreed to the higher price on the promise of better quality and reliability. If this promise was delivered then this could be seen as a good decision (and performance). The savings in waste (partly represented by the usage variance) amount to $C,CF0 favourable. This would seem to suggest better quality. The fact that the production level jumped from F0,000 to A00,000 also suggests that suppliers’ reliability was good (in that they were able to deliver so much). The net variance position is relevant at a saving of $A,GHE.It is also possible that such a large increase in volume of sales and production should have yielded a volume based discount from suppliers. This should also be reflected in any performance assessment in that if this has not been secured it could be seen as a poor performance.This is backed up by the lack of obvious quality problems since we are told that A00,000 cards were produced and sold in the period, a huge increase on budget. The ability of a production manager to react and be flexible can often form a part of a performance assessment.In conclusion the manager could be said to have performed well.