Lean Accounting Blog

The Real Relationship between Costs & Time

One of the primary weaknesses of a product costing system is the fact that the longer it takes to make ...
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Conversations, not Conclusions

One of the primary differences between traditional management accounting and lean management accounting is lean management accounting focuses on creating conversations, ...
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How Lean Thinking Improves Financial Results While Avoiding Traditional Cost Cutting

This blog is an article Mike De Luca wrote for the LEI Lean Accounting Newsletter. In July, Nick Katko and ...
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Improving Accounting: Error Proofing

Chapter 7 – Improving Quality in Accounting: Error Proofing The Practicing Lean Accounting Blog Series are excerpts from a new ...
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Practicing PDCA in Lean Accounting

Chapter 6 – Practicing PDCA The Practicing Lean Accounting Blog Series are excerpts from a new book, Practicing Lean Accounting ...
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Using Lean Measures in Lean Accounting

Chapter 5 - Using Lean Measures The Practicing Lean Accounting Blog Series are excerpts from a new book, Practicing Lean ...
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Identifying Waste in Lean Accounting

The Practicing Lean Accounting Blog Series are excerpts from a new book, Practicing Lean Accounting by Nick Katko and Mike ...
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Understanding Customer Value in Lean Accounting

Chapter 3 - Understanding Customer Value The Practicing Lean Accounting Blog Series are excerpts from a new book, Practicing Lean ...
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Lean Thinking for Lean Accounting

Chapter 2 - Lean Thinking for Accounting The Practicing Lean Accounting Blog Series are excerpts from a new book, Practicing ...
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Practicing Lean Accounting

Chapter 1 - Practicing Lean Accounting The Practicing Lean Accounting Blog Series are excerpts from a new book, Practicing Lean Accounting by ...
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Understanding Customer Value: How Accounting Applies this Foundational Lean Concept to its Work

Excerpted and adapted from the upcoming book Practicing Lean Accounting by Nick Katko and Mike De Luca, to be published ...
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Why a Lean Quoting Process – Part 3

This is an excerpt from Ed Grinde's new book Leveraging Lean with Lean Quoting, now available on amazon.com. This is ...
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Why a Lean Quoting Process – Part 2

This is an excerpt from Ed Grinde's new book Leveraging Lean with Lean Quoting, now available on amazon.com. In my ...
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Why a Lean Quoting Process – Part 1

This is an excerpt from Ed Grinde's new book Leveraging Lean with Lean Quoting, now available on amazon.com. Have you ...
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Value stream management in emergency management

NICK KATKO, RICCARDO PAVANATO, GIANANDREA CAPO This free article appeared in the Harvard Business Review – Italy as part of ...
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Myth-Busting: Time Drives Costs

A few years ago I was working with a software company its lean transformation. During a training session someone made ...
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The Lowdown on Lean Accounting Interview

Here is a 35 minute interview I did for the Kaplan's Financial Management Network, which answers the basic questions about ...
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An Accountant’s Guide to Understanding Lean Accounting

I think one of the difficulties accountants face in understanding Lean Accounting is because we are trained to be “doers” ...
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Lean Accounting and Inventory Reduction

One of the most critical responsibilities accounting must assume, in a lean manufacturing company using a standard costing system, is ...
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Lean Accounting: Aligning Financial Management Practices

Lean companies organize their entire operations around value streams. The simplest definition of a value stream is all of the ...
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Lean Accounting: Alignment of Financial Statements

External financial statements must comply with financial accounting regulations, which often times results in a disconnect between operational activities and ...
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Lean Accounting: Aligning Performance Measurements

Lean companies recognize that optimization of the entire value stream flow is the primary goal of lean operating practices, tools ...
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How Lean Accounting aligns Lean with the accounting function

Accounting professionals are trained to be “doers” of accounting. Accounting training and education is about how to perform accounting tasks, ...
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Lean Accounting: Aligning the Lean Organization

Lean is first and foremost a business strategy based on 5 principles: creating customer value; organizing the business around its ...
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Material & Machine Cost Reduction (Part 3 of 3)

In the first cost reduction blog I explained cost reduction is lean organizations is different than traditional cost reduction practices ...
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Labor Cost Reduction (Part 2 of 3)

In the previous blog I explained cost reduction in lean organizations is different than traditional cost reduction practices because of ...
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Cost Reduction in Lean Organizations Part 1 of 3

Does lean reduce costs? – Yes! Tiiachi Ohno stated this very clearly: “costs do not exist to be calculated, they ...
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The Fundamentals of Value Stream Costing – Part 3 of 3

Shared Value Stream Costs Shared value stream costs exist because resources or consumption of goods & services may be shared ...
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The Fundamentals of Value Stream Costing – Part 2 of 3

Value Stream Costing Categories In value stream costing, we like to categorize value stream costs either as direct costs; shared ...
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The Fundamentals of Value Stream Costing – Part 1 of 3

Lean is a multi-faceted business strategy, with a primary focus on employees and learning. Through the use of various lean ...
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Lean Financial Management: Production Cost Analysis

The purpose of a value stream income statement is to analyze current value stream costs compared to current value stream ...
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Lean Financial Management: Material Cost Analysis

In the world of Lean Accounting, you will hear that a value stream income statement needs to show “actual material ...
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Lean Decision Making Framework Guidelines

Lean Decision Making Framework: General Guidelines In this blog, I’d like to explain 3 general guidelines accounting should follow for ...
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Removing Standard Costs from the Income Statement

Creating value stream income statements is the second part of a lean decision making framework that is not based on ...
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Removing Standard Costing from Financial Analysis

Using standard product costs in business decision-making works well in traditional manufacturing companies, because standard costing systems were designed for ...
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Lean Accounting & Inventory Reduction

One of the most critical responsibilities accounting must assume, in a lean manufacturing company using a standard costing system, is ...
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Lean Accounting & Standard Costing Variances

A standard costing system generates rate & volume variances by design. Standards are entered into the system, actual is reported ...
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Lean Accounting and Standard Costing: An Introduction

If you are in the accounting department in a lean manufacturing company, and your company uses a standard costing system, ...
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Lean Accounting and Generally Accepted Accounting Principles

In the context of applying Lean Accounting in manufacturing companies, there have been some arguments that Lean Accounting practices do ...
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A Better Way to Understand Product Profitability

Many companies calculate product profitability by subtracting a Standard Cost from the Price and calling it a Margin. But this ...
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Using Value Stream Costing for Root Cause Analysis

Value Stream Costing (VSC) is often misunderstood when it’s introduced into a business. First reactions to VSC often are based ...
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Time for Leadership – How Standard Costs Impact Company Behavior

There are many things wrong with using standard costing in an Lean company, but perhaps the most dangerous is when ...
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Lean Accounting in the Defense Environment by Vince Trnka

Brian Maskell writes:  This is another in our series of “guest” blogs. I first met Vince Trnka at the University ...
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Capacity Has Value – Part 3

In my last couple of blogs I proposed a new way the analyze capacity in a lean company, and gave ...
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Capacity Has Value – Part 2

In my last blog (here’s the link in case you missed it: https://maskell.com/?p=637 )   I proposed a new way the ...
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Untangling Complexity with Lean Accounting by Eldad Coppens

 First, a note from Brian Maskell:     Eldad Coppens is the CFO of Qfix.  Mr. Coppens  holds an MBA from the ...
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Capacity Has Value – Part 1

In manufacturing companies, the term “capacity” typically refers to the aggregate production capabilities of your factory.  It’s a bit like ...
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It’s About Spending, Not Costs – Part 4

Continuing my discussion about what I call “Lean Cost Management:”  I’ve been making the case for a Lean Cost Management ...
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It’s About Spending, Not Costs – Part 3

Continuing my discussion about Lean Cost Management: last blog, I made the case for a Lean Cost Management System vs ...
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It’s About Spending, Not Costs – Part 2

Last blog, I laid out my CFO experience (and probably yours) using what I’ll call “traditional” cost management methods.    In ...
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It’s About Spending, Not Costs – Part 1

During my days as a working CFO, my #1 job was financial review and analysis. I had to explain my ...
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Performance Measurements #2

Last time I blogged about the differences we find between traditional and lean focused performance measurements.  I summed up my ...
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Performance Measurements #1

In some recent blogs, I’ve been writing about some of the unique attributes of the CFO in lean companies – ...
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The Real Cost of Quality

A few weeks ago I participated in an online discussion about the Cost of Quality. The person initiating the discussion ...
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Lean Accounting and GAAP – Part 3

Relevance and reliability are the primary qualities the qualitative characteristics of accounting information that distinguishes better (more useful) information from ...
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Lean Accounting and GAAP – Part 2

Relevance and reliability are the primary qualities the qualitative characteristics of accounting information that distinguishes better (more useful) information from ...
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Lean Accounting & GAAP – Part 1

The FASB in Concepts Statement No. 2 identifies the qualitative characteristics of accounting information that distinguishes better (more useful) information ...
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How Standard Costs Impact Company Behavior

There are many things wrong with standard costing, but perhaps the most dangerous is when standard costing begins to drive ...
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