Lean Principles and Accounting
Implications
Lean production is a term used to describe a
manufacturing approach that combines the best
elements of craft and mass production while
seeking to avoid the high cost of the craft setting
and the rigidity of mass production. Lean
concepts have now broadened to include service
companies and the entire organization. Consequently,
the term “lean enterprise” is a more inclusive
descriptor. Lean enterprise goals include:
improving quality and customer satisfaction, creating
more value for the customers, eliminating
waste, reducing lead time, and reducing costs.
Lean enterprise begins with a deep understanding
of how the organization creates value
for the customer and how this value is created
through the company’s value streams. Lean organizations
continuously change their processes so
that more resources are devoted to value-creating
tasks and so that tasks that create no value are
minimized or eliminated. This does not occur
through traditional, project-based changes but
through continuous improvement methods—
known generically as kaizen—engaging the entire
work force.
The backbone of lean processes is a carefully
constructed conceptual architecture that supports
the structural, interpersonal, external, and internal
relationships governing a company’s operations.
This architecture creates the platform for accounting
to support the decisions that govern these relationships.
The five principles of lean are derived
from Womack and Jones.2
They include:
• Value: Lean starts with a definition of what
constitutes value from the customer’s standpoint
in terms of the features and characteristics
of the product or service.
• Implication: Rather than targeting a
predetermined standard product cost
and motivating managers to overproduce
in an effort to reduce variances,
a lean enterprise continually redefines
value based on the customer rather than
an internal standard. Lean organizations
have formal methods for defining and
calculating customer value.
• Value Stream: The value stream is the
sequence of processes through which a
product is transformed from raw material to
delivery at the customer’s site. Normally, a
value stream is defined by a group of related
products or services that employ the same
process steps.
• Implication: Traditional accounting seeks
to calculate standard costs for a product
or service by assessing the labor and
other (so called) direct costs required to
provide the service or make the product,
and then allocating associated support
costs to the individual product or