Let Us Customize Our Lean Beans Seminar for YOUR Business!

QUESTION:  We have been implementing Lean in Operations for one to two years, and seeing improvements in Operations.  However, our financial statements do not reflect these improvements.  What should we do?

ANSWER:  Change accounting systems!

We are not being factitious here! Remember that your traditional Standard Absorption cost system is volume-based.  But in Lean we do not "make one" until the customer "takes one."  Thus your traditional Standard Absorption cost system does not work in a Lean environment!

In many businesses today, financial people are only concerned with "control" and budget "variance analysis/paralysis."  And these financial professionals are probably sitting in an isolated location, separated from your Lean Value Streams in Operations.  These folks are most likely "corporate police" rather than "business advocates" and "business partners" with Operations.  I would even bet that some financial people in many businesses beginning the Lean journey today are not committed to the Lean "cultural change" but rather only to the "bottom line," transactions, and recording history.

Value Stream Accounting

The best way to get ALL people in your Organization to embrace Change and thus modify behavior is to have ALL Associates working in small, cross-functional teams - what we call Product Families or Value Streams.  And this is the very first step to successfully implementing Lean Accounting… what some call "Value Stream Accounting."  Lean Beans LLC can help you tear down your department walls and functional silos, and build Product Families.

In the 1990's, "command and control" was the mantra of Accounting.  Do this!  Why?  Because Accounting said so!  Operations managers were forced to understand their own piece of the business - not in terms of income and cost, but rather as variance and percentages (of the whole business) that bear little relationship to reality.  In the 1990's, businesses adopted JIT and TQM and other "tools," but often remained blinded by old accounting practices.  In much of business today, the same is still true.

Keep It Simple

Lean Accounting, like Lean, is a business strategy.  Some have gone so far as to describe it as a "social system."  However, it is definitely not a CD-rom!  It is not an expensive software system such as ABC Cost.  It is a Management System.  In Lean Accounting, we strive to stream-line information for each Product Family or Value Stream, and to keep the accounting for Lean simple - in a checkbook-style format that non-financial people can understand.  Financial people now become "consultants" in Product Families, rather than "report-generators."  In every company endeavoring to make the Lean journey without Lean Accounting, accounting becomes a barrier to change.  Lean Beans LLC can help your  financial group re-focus on processes (rather than transactions,) become value-added in the Product Families, focus on Cost Management (rather than Cost Accounting,) and "mind what they measure" (only the direct costs which a Product Family can influence.)

Let Us Train Your Accountants

And this is just the type of customized Lean Accounting training and implementation assistance that Lean Beans LLC can bring into your business at your location.  We will teach your financial people how to use Target Costing in budgets, such that your budgets CAN be meaningful.  We will help your financial and operations people transform your traditional company P&L into small Lean P&L's - one for each Product Family and each Value Stream.  We will show you, then, how to measure performance based on variances of Actual costs to Target costs, and perform trend analysis.  We will teach you how to gather the data for your Value Stream P&L from the shop floor, rather than from G/L accounts.

We Will Customize the Seminar and Come to You

The Learning Objectives for the Lean Accounting Seminar, which we facilitate in 30 major US cities, is located below our Schedule of cities on our website.  For those of you who would like us to customize the seminar and bring it to your specific business at your specific location, please do call (860-280-6509) or email (sue.sondergelt@leanbeans.net).
This service is offered to you at the fixed cost of only four (4) seats in our standard seminar, and you may invite as many participants as you wish!  We are happy to discuss with you a seminar or workshop customized to your business, and facilitate this on-site at your location.  We will also provide you with a proposal to assist you in the implementation of Lean Accounting.

Write or call today for a proposal to assist you in implementing Lean Accounting in your Lean enterprise