Lean companies organize their entire operations around value streams. The simplest definition of a value stream is all of the necessary process steps from receipt of a customer order to delivery of the order. Value streams cut across the traditional department structure. The goal of a lean business is to flow orders through their value streams as fast as possible, with the highest quality.
Most financial accounting systems are based on a traditional department structure. Accounting uses their financial accounting systems as a source of all internal financial analysis, such as departmental expense reports & profitability analysis. Accounting also uses their financial accounting systems to maintain compliance with external reporting.
For internal financial analysis, a lean organization needs to transition away from departmental-based analysis to value stream-based analysis. This is necessary to create alignment between internal financial statements, financial management practices and value streams, which are the primary unit of organization and management in a Lean organization.
Value streams are the profit centers of a lean business. This means all internal financial information should be focused on the profit centers of the lean business. All direct value stream expenses should be assigned to value streams, and all relevant expense analyses should be at the value stream level. Analyze expenses and profitability at the value stream level. Think of expenses as the “cost of resources” and learn how value stream performance can be improved to manage these costs by using lean performance measures to link operational performance to financial performance.
Here are 3 general guidelines lean organizations should follow for creating an effective financial management practices around a lean strategy.
The financial impact of any decision is based on the impact on total value stream profitability. Value streams are the profit centers of a lean enterprise and all financial analysis should be performed at this level.The dynamic cause and effect relationships between value stream operating performance, capacity and profitability are real and can be modeled financially.
Stop using cost allocations! Most cost allocations have a level of subjectivity in them, such as product costs in manufacturing companies. Other cost allocations are an attempt to make a fixed cost variable by linking it to units or services produced. Using rates in financial analysis is dangerous because they can make it look like costs are decreasing, when in reality they are not changing. It is critical to eliminate cost allocations and understand the relationships between operating performance, capacity and costs using problem-solving practices. This is done by creating an environment in which true root cause analysis can be conducted on cost behavior and operational solutions can be put in place to achieve the desired cost behavior.
Here is an example in manufacturing – direct labor costs. Standard costing systems assigns direct labor based on a direct labor rate & volume produced. If a manufacturing business was considering eliminating a product or product line, the financial analysis would show a “direct labor savings”, because direct labor is assumed to be variable. The reality in most companies is your full-time employees come to work every day and get paid a full day’s pay whether they produce 100 products per day or 500 products per day. Actual labor would decrease only if fewer employees were employed.
Lean Accounting Thinking is to begin to understand how costs change in a lean manufacturing company, without using cost allocations. If cost allocations are commonly used in a company’s in financial analysis, it’s time to begin migrating away from them by introducing the value stream income statement.
The lean idea that eliminating waste creates time – the time spent on waste is now available to create value (often described as “creating capacity”). Lean accounting incorporates this into financial management practices: the creation of time has no financial impact, but how the business uses that time does. A lean business can use this newly-created capacity to sell more products or services, and the financial impact will be increasing revenue without corresponding increases in costs.
Lean Material Cost Management
In lean accounting, a value stream income statement needs to show actual material cost, this and is typically defined as actual material purchased. Actual material purchased is used to align material cost to lean operating practices, so lean performance measurements can be used to do root cause analysis.
There are three operational stages for material after it enters a value stream:
- Sold – material can be processed through the value stream and sold
- Scrapped – material is defective and scrapped during operations
- Stored – material can be stored as inventory, and subsequently either sold or scrapped
At the beginning of the lean journey, material in most value streams will likely be in all 3 stages. Then as quality & flow improves, the quantity of material scrapped & stored will reduce. Eventually if a company can reach 30 days of inventory, actual material cost will be what is purchased & sold within period.
As lean manufacturing operations improves quality, value stream material cost will decrease because less material is being consumed. Using a standard lean performance measure such as first time through or scrap rate, it’s not difficult to calculate the financial impact of better quality.
As lean manufacturing operations improves flow, it will also lead less material being consumed. Using a standard lean performance measure such as inventory days or inventory turns, the financial impact of inventory reduction can be calculated. This is very important to show on a value stream income statement, because the external financial statements will not show this as reducing inventory only has a balance sheet impact – improving cash.
One financial analysis accounting needs to move away from in a lean manufacturing company is simply analyzing material price. Don’t get me wrong – the logic of lowering material prices does have a positive impact of profits. But in lean manufacturing operations, material price is balanced with supplier quality, delivery & lead time.
The price of anything is a reflection of value. Lean manufacturing operations values short lead times, high quality and on time delivery from its suppliers because this type of supplier performance will increase flow, and thus increase revenue. Suppliers that provides the best overall performance with lowest price usually become preferred suppliers.
The danger of focusing financial analysis simply on lowering material prices is the only short-term solution is large volume purchases from suppliers that offer volume price discounts. But this is “anti-lean” because it increases inventory.
Lean Production Cost Management
The purpose of a value stream income statement is to analyze current value stream costs compared to current value stream performance measures to determine root cause analysis of current costs.
Actual production costs for any value stream include the labor costs for people that work in the value stream, costs to own, lease, operate and maintain machines in the value stream, a portion of the facility/factory costs and any other production cost that can be directly attributed to the operation of a value stream.
It’s important for the entire lean organization to learn & understand the relationships between value stream performance measures and actual production costs on a value stream income statement. Understanding the root causes of value stream performance measurements reveals direct insights into the current state of production costs and also what improvements can be made operationally to reduce and/or better control production costs. Let’s look at some examples.
The cost of labor & machines in any value stream can be explained by understanding value stream productivity. A typical lean productivity measure is output divided by the number resources to produce the output. The numerator “output” is usually related to revenue. The denominator “resources” is usually based on number of people or actual hours worked by people or machines.
The primary root cause of low productivity is that the resources are spending too much time on wasteful activities, rather than the activities that generate revenue. Eliminating the waste frees up capacity, increasing revenue without a corresponding increase in costs.
On a typical value stream income statement, actual material, labor and machine costs will account for the overwhelming majority of value stream costs, possibly up to 80% of total costs. Concentrating all efforts understand the root causes of these 3 costs using lean performance measures will create very strong cost management practices.
Financial Impact of Continuous Improvement
A lean business strategy is a business growth strategy. How this strategy works can be best summarized as follows: lean practices, tools and methods are adapted to create a culture of continuous improvement, which reduces and eliminates wasteful activities, creating available capacity. Lean companies use this available capacity to create value for their customers, which increases sales without increasing the costs related to capacity, such as labor cost.
Calculating the financial impact of continuous improvement aligns the lean strategy and lean operating practices directly with the actual impact on profitability. The financial analysis is very dynamic in the fact that value stream operating performance, capacity and profitability must be analyzed simultaneously for every improvement event. Following is the standard work for performance such a financial analysis
The first step is to understand the specific operational impact of a lean improvement, which usually results in the creation of capacity (or time). There may be some direct cost savings, such as decrease in scrap or overtime, but the primary impact of most improvement events is the creation of capacity. The resulting financial analysis is based on determining how to use available capacity to grow revenue and/or making other decisions about the available capacity.
Revenue growth opportunities should be looked at in the classic marketing approach:
• Can we sell more existing products to existing customers?
• Can we develop new customers for our existing products?
• Can we develop new products for existing customers?
• Can we develop new products for new customers?
Here are some issues to consider when a company is reviewing options of revenue generation:
• What impact will lead time reduction have on your competitive position in existing markets?
• How can you position yourself against your competitors if you lead times are less that theirs?
• If lean principles are applied to the product development process, what impact will this have on generating revenue from new products?
• How much available capacity will be required in generating this revenue?
Based on the different scenarios of using the available capacity to increase revenue, a future state value stream income statement can be created to show the actual impact on value stream profitability based on each scenario.
After taking into account all sales opportunities, he next step is looking at capacity. In the area of capacity management, the focus should be reallocating available capacity created through improvement efforts.
- Cross train employees to create a more flexible workforce. A cross training program should be part of continuous improvement and progress measured by performance measurements
- Assign available employees to continuous improvement activities when productive activities are not available. A formal company-wide continuous improvement program should be created that identifies employees with available capacity and matches them to continuous improvement activities.
- Bring outsourced activities in-house. All outsourced production activities should be analyzed to determine if the company possesses the resources to perform these activities in-house. If the resources exist, bringing outsourced activities in house will reduce costs
The financial impact of reallocating capacity between value streams is to shift expenses between value streams. Transferring capacity to another value stream creates available capacity in that value stream, and sales scenarios must be modeled again.
When a company commits to a lean strategy, the fundamentals of how the business operates will change as lean practices are put in place. How the business is controlled, what needs to be measured and the relevant information for business decisions will be different than “before lean.” Internal financial reports, financial analysis, measurements, data used to control the business and decision-making criteria all must support “Lean Thinking.”
Lean thinking requires the creation of a lean management accounting system. This is a journey, much like lean is a journey. Without a lean management accounting system, there is a no alignment between lean practices and the information company management will be receiving to understand how well the lean business is performing. Because management accounting systems are not externally regulated, they can be changed by companies. And changing management accounting systems in no way compromises external financial reporting.
The accounting function must assume leadership in creating a lean management accounting system. It’s vital to every lean company that this is created, maintained and improved, as it will provide all levels of management the relevant, timely financial and operational information needed to drive a lean business strategy forward to financial success.