One of the most difficult changes made by senior managers when they are beginning the process of lean transformation
is to stop thinking about production improvements in terms of short-term cost reductions. This is very much massproduction,standard cost thinking. This thinking will limit the progress the company can make with lean manufacturing and other lean initiatives. We need to start thinking about customer value and business growth.
This does not mean that cost information is unimportant; cost is very important. So important, in fact, that we need much better tools to show the cost information: tools like value stream costing and box scores.