Steinway and Sons - Activity Based Costing

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Steinway & Sons
Visit the site below in item 1 and take the factory tour. Then in a 3 to 5 page paper, do items 2 and 3 below:
1. Factory Tour of Steinway Pianos (http://www.steinway.com/factory/tour.shtml) (This is an excellent case that goes right to the heart of the topic in this module and uses real world information.)

This information is provided in the above link:
In a unique method used by Steinway for over a century, the inner and outer piano rims are bent into the shape of the rim as a single continuous piece. Before Theodore Steinway developed and patented this method in 1878, rims were made of separate pieces held together with joints. 18 hard-rock maple layers, each twenty-two feet long, are used to construct the rim of a concert grand piano. The layers are first coated with glue and stacked. The stacked layers are then glued into a single form of wood by bending on the rim-bending press, a giant piano-shaped vise. The rim-bending team centers the layers on the press and wrestles the wood into place with the aid of clamps.
The soundboard is a large wooden diaphragm with a wooden bridge centered on its top side. The piano strings pass over the bridge, and the bridge transfers the string energy into the soundboard. As a result, the sound of the strings is amplified. The soundboard is pressed into the shape of a dome, allowing it to withstand the combined downward force of 1,000 pounds from over 200 strings.

The Steinway soundboard is carefully formed, by hand, into a patented Steinway design. Close grained quarter-sawn spruce is used to make the soundboard because the wood is flexible enough to vibrate and therefore project sound, but strong enough to support the weight of the piano's strings. The soundboard is expertly tapered by a craftsman to be slightly thinner at the edges so that it can vibrate properly once it is glued to the piano's inner rim.

Before a soundboard can be placed into a piano case, the bridge must be notched for the strings that will pass over it. First, a heavy black graphite is applied to the top of the bridge. A three-pronged tool is then used to mark the points where the bridge will be pinned and notched. It takes years of training for the craftsman to know exactly where to place the notches.

To ensure cosmetic beauty for a wood-finished instrument, all of the veneer on a single Steinway piano is cut from the same tree. In the veneer room of the factory, veneer is cut to size, matched and identified with the piano number.

The piano rim is being transformed into a piano case. A wooden brace assembly is being custom fit within a rim structure. This network of bracing helps support the 340 pound cast iron plate. The braces fan out within the rim structure ...