Lean Accounting - Introduction

Introduction

What we now call lean manufacturing was developed by Toyota and other Japanese companies. Toyota executives claim that the famed Toyota Production System was inspired by what they learned during visits to the Ford Motor Company in the 1920s and developed by Toyota leaders such as Taiichi Ohno and consultant Shigeo Shingo after World War II. As pioneer American and European companies embraced lean manufacturing methods in the late 1980s, they discovered that lean thinking must be applied to every aspect of the company including the financial and management accounting processes. (See also, William Deming.)

There are two main thrusts for Lean Accounting. The first is the application of lean methods to the company's accounting, control, and measurement processes. This is no different than applying lean methods to any other processes. The objective is to eliminate waste, free up capacity, speed up the process, eliminate errors and defects, and make the process clear and understandable.

The second (and more important) thrust of Lean Accounting is to fundamentally change the accounting, control, and measurement processes so they motivate lean change and improvement, provide information that is suitable for control and decision-making, provide an understanding of customer value, correctly assess the financial impact of lean improvement, and are themselves simple, visual, and low-waste. Lean Accounting does not require the traditional management accounting methods like standard costing, activity-based costing, variance reporting, cost-plus pricing, complex transactional control systems, and untimely and confusing financial reports. These are replaced by

  • lean-focused performance measurements
  • simple summary direct costing of the value streams
  • decision-making and reporting using a box score
  • financial reports that are timely and presented in "plain language" that everyone can understand
  • radical simplification and elimination of transactional control systems by eliminating the need for them
  • driving lean changes from a deep understanding of the value created for the customers
  • eliminating traditional budgeting through monthly sales, operations, and financial planning processes (SOFP)
  • value-based pricing
  • correct understanding of the financial impact of lean change

As an organization becomes more mature with lean thinking and methods, they recognize that the combined methods of Lean Accounting in fact creates a Lean Management System (LMS) designed to provide the planning, the operational and financial reporting, and the motivation for change required to prosper the company's on-going lean transformation.

Up until 2006, the methods of Lean Accounting were not clearly defined because they had been developed by different people in different companies. A meeting was held at the 2005 Lean Accounting Summit (Lean Accounting Summit) conference including a number of leaders in the field, and a decision was made to develop a document called "The Principles, Practices, and Tools of Lean Accounting" (PPT) (Lean Accounting PPT). While the methods of lean accounting are continually evolving, the PPT lays out the primary methods of Lean Accounting and shows how they fit together into a Lean Management System. The PPT emphasizes not only the tools and methods of Lean Accounting, but also the need for focusing on customer value and the empowerment (or respect) for people. The PPT was published in Target, the Journal of the Association of Manufacturing Excellence (AME) in 2006. (Lean Accounting PPT article)

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