Download Accounting in the Lean Enterprise : Providing Simple, by McVay, Gloria; Kennedy, Frances; Fullerton, Rosemary PDF

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Accountants were increasingly adept at developing and reporting all types of variances. Recognizing that standard costs often were outdated and inaccurate, they even started to budget and track trends of expected variances of the variances, as explained below (see Solomon and Fullerton, 2007). As accountants became more sophisticated in their traditional cost accounting approaches, the information they provided became less relevant and understandable to managers outside of accounting. Evidence that accountants are out of touch with their customers is provided by books and seminars developed about 28 ◾ Accounting in the Lean Enterprise: Providing Simple, Practical, and Decision-Relevant Information accounting for the nonaccountant.

For box scores that generally relate to the whole value stream, weekly team meetings involving all value stream members should be held to assess performance. It is important that all measures monitored are used for feedback and identification of opportunities for improvement, rather than for punitive assessments of individual worker performance. Summary Value stream management is a different way of managing your business. It is visual, timely, clear, and customer-­focused. It opens up communication and attacks the traditional functional fiefdoms.

Thus, this effect should be highlighted, so value stream leaders are not punished for decreases in their margins created from reduced inventories—a desired lean behavior. The new reporting system should be easier for everyone in the plant to understand than the traditional format that adjusts cost of goods sold for favorable and unfavorable quantity and price variances. As explained earlier, value stream costing deals primarily with actual costs; the standard costing system is generally turned off—especially for labor and overhead.