Article: Slim pickings: devotees of lean manufacturing equate its practices with the elimination of cost, but this belief is misguided and it can distract managers from seeing where process improvements really need to be made. John Darlington offers a series of real-life examples to illustrate the dilemma and explains where management accountants should fit into the lean equation. (Finance Management Accounting).

Lean manufacturing insists on viewing the benefits associated with its implementation in terms of cost reduction. The removal of "waste" is seen as synonymous with the removal of cost, but this is wrong and it leads to clashes between accountants and "lean experts" who cannot reconcile results to the numbers claimed to have been saved. Worse still, it may lead firms embarking on lean enterprise to have unrealistic expectations about its value to the business. Because senior executives are under such pressure these days to produce results, an ill-conceived cost-reduction plan could result in their departure and the abandonment of the company's efforts to "go lean" ...

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