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Title: Practical Lean Accounting: A Proven System for Measuring and Managing the Lean Enterprise
ISBN: 1563272431
Author:
Brian H. Maskell
Bruce Baggaley
Publicate Date: 2003-12-19
Publish: 2003-12-19
List Price: $50.00
Average Customer Rating: 4.5
Format: Paperback
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $42.70
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $42.98
Amazon Merchant Price: $45.00
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| Customer Review: |
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1: Disappointing
I have to think that the other reviews of this book must have been written by friends of the author because this book really is pretty poor. Lack of organization is a particular problem.
To begin the book, the authors fail to give any meaningful discussion of lean to frame the discussion for the rest of the book. Then they jump right in discussing lean MANUFACTURING, rather than lean ACCOUNTING. While "accounting for lean" receives significant discussion in the book, "lean accounting" receives only a single chapter.
Particularly troubling is how the authors constantly use terms without defining what they mean. For example, by page 41, they have used the terms "takt," "cell," "heijunka," and "5S" without telling us what they mean. None of these words are part of the vocabulary of accountants, the presumed target audience of the book.
Troubling as well is the lack of discussion of lean accounting outside of a manufacturing environment.
While the authors of this book may have considerable experience in lean, they lack the skills to effectively teach the rest of us much that is meaningful.
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2: Did your Lean Initiative Stall? Read this book.
I've seen it (and lived it) multiple times. An Exec kicks off a Lean Initiative and the company creates a Lean Enterprise. At first, its all about training, Kaizen Blitz, 5S, prototype cells and Kanbans. The focus is about 95% shop floor processes. But after a while, the program starts to stall. Folks start seeing two sets of rules (traditional MRP and Lean), but none of the traditional goes away. So Lean start sounding and feeling like just a bunch of extra paperwork and steps without any obvious benefit to those who "live it" every day. In the end, the program fails or the Lean Enterprise is reorganized to try again, usually with similar results. This book clearly explains what is happening. It also provides a different perspective to the initial Lean implementation strategies that will help pull the organization through that first big stalling out and propel the initiative into true effectiveness. A "must read" book for anyone that is or is going to be dealing with a fledgling Lean initiative.
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3: it really helps
Well structured and very clear concepts, It help me to have a deep understanding of how to develop a value stream mapping. I really recommend it.
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4: Who' Counting & Practical Lean Accounting: 1+1>2
"Who's Counting" and "Practical Lean Accounting" are two great books on lean accounting. I wondered some time ago, which one to read and I am glad that I could not decide, so I bought and read them both. They complement each other extremely well and each one conveys the lessons of lean accounting from a different angle.
"Practical Lean Accounting" is a well structured textbook, approaching lean accounting in a systemized way. Starting from straight-forward shop-floor measurements, like the day-by-the-hour report, it gradually immerses the reader into more demanding topics, like value stream costing or lean performance measurement, culminating in the thorough description of the Sales, Operations and Financial Planning (SOFP) process, which is the way, how an entire lean enterprise is planned, controlled and measured. Lean practitioners looking for specific answers to particular questions will find it easy to navigate through the book. People with the luxury of time for reading it cover to cover will also like it, due to the gradual increase in the complexity of the topics and the many references to other chapters.
"Who's Counting" focuses more on the human side of turning the vision of lean accounting into reality. The novel format is the best way to illustrate, how strong the resistance against change will be and from how many corners of the organization it will attack back. Knowing what to do and knowing why is not enough, the issue is not capturing people's brains. The real challenge is conquering their hearts, while tearing down decades worth of wrong beliefs, bad trade-offs and political game-playing. Mike, the hero of the book teaches us through his own mistakes, that patience, tactfulness and respect for people is more helpful, then acting like a bull in a china shop. The reward is the enthusiastic desire of fellows to go his way and take ownership of the new processes. He even manages to turn Fred, a CFO who has to recognize, that most of what he built during his career was wrong, to use the 3 years until his retirement for becoming the most enthusiastic advocate of change!
Both books provide the reader with insight and incite self-reflection about "the way, we do things". There is hardly any chapter without a sacred cow being slaughtered, however this will strike the reader as plain common sense, due to the thorough description of the reasons. Deeply engrained management practices, such as approval routings, full absorption overhead allocation, standard costing or departmental budgeting will seem ridiculous, once the reader starts to open the eyes to see their fundamentally wrong assumptions.
These books will make You hate many of Your current processes!
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5: The Best Management Accounting Book in Years
"Practical Lean Accounting" is the best management accounting book I've read in 20 years - maybe more. Well written and illustrated with plenty of examples and diagrams, it adds new tools to management accounting and restores the relevance of some older ones. As such I recommend it to all management accountants and students - whether or not you are involved in lean accounting itself.
The aim of the book is to "produce a roadmap for finance managers in companies seeking to transition their organisations into lean enterprises". Lean accounting is a new approach to managing a business and, as management accountants, we have a duty to be there. As the authors say "it's never too early to start dismantling the company's transaction driven control systems. They represent huge amounts of waste and cost to the organisation !".
Specifically, lean management seeks to radically restructure the organisation into Value Streams (rather than functional departments), and this requires new management accounting tools including Value Stream performance measures, Box Scores, new methods of planning and budgeting, target costing and a whole host of other tools. The book explores all these tools in detail. The introduction of "lean" tools also allows significant reduction in transactions in the company's accounting processes, including the elimination of full-absorption costing.
Lean accounting is, therefore, designed to replace "traditional" accounting techniques which encourage inefficient practices such as building inventory, and often lead to poor management decisions (using Standard costs). Traditional measures are also too complicated for operational employees to understand easily and are often too late to be useful in shopfloor decision making. Lean accounting, by contrast, is very much focused on simple visual shopfloor measures for instant decision making, coupled with management accounting tools for longer term planning.
"Practical Lean Accounting" provides a good overview of the lean management process, and excellent linkage to management accounting activities. Highly recommended.
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