Lean Management Accounting Workshop Resolves Conflicts Between Lean Thinking and Traditional Accounting

Cambridge, MA, March 01, 2010 --(PR.com)-- The nonprofit Lean Enterprise Institute (LEI) will present the workshop “Management Accounting for Lean Businesses” to help financial and operations managers and executives understand and implement the necessary changes in finance needed to support a lean transformation.

The workshop will run May 13, 2010, from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Marriott Seattle Airport, Seattle, WA. It is part of a series of eleven public workshops on how to implement lean management concepts in healthcare and administrative processes as well as in management accounting and corporate strategy.

Lean Management Accounting Workshop
The workshop will guide financial and operations managers through the necessary changes in finance needed to support lean transformations, which often cause conflicts with long-established accounting systems. Attendees will learn:

-Why traditional management accounting doesn’t support lean transformations.
-How to create plain-English financial statements that nonfinancial managers can use for decision making.
-How to eliminate waste from the accounting system so information is reported faster.
-Why lean is a business strategy that transforms the entire organization.
-The logic and proven methodology for creating a lean accounting system that accurately reveals the benefits of a lean transformation that are hidden in conventional financial statements. (For example, significant productivity gains and profits can appear lower as inventories are lowered, even though cash flow improves dramatically.)

The workshop also will cover performance measurement, cost management, inventory accounting, budgeting, and a road map for implementing lean accounting step-by-step as operations move from batch-and-queue production to flow.

Lean Thinking
Workshop instructor Orest Fiume, former vice president of finance and administration of The Wiremold Company, led the company’s conversion to lean accounting, a key element in its adoption of lean management. The transformation was made famous in Lean Thinking by James P. Womack and Dan T. Jones. While at Wiremold, Fiume also developed accounting systems that supported the company’s entire lean business efforts and went on to install lean accounting at more than 20 Wiremold acquisitions.

Pricing and Discounts
The $800 workshop fee includes tuition, training materials, breakfast, lunch, and snacks. For complete details about content, instructors, discounts, special room rates, and to register, go to the Education page at lean.org or call 617- 871-2900.

What is Lean?
The terms lean manufacturing, lean production, or lean management refer to a complete business system for organizing and managing product development, operations, suppliers, customer relations, and the overall enterprise that requires less capital, material, space, time, or human effort to produce products and services with fewer defects to precise customer desires, compared with traditional modern management.

Lean Enterprise Institute
Lean Enterprise Institute, Inc., was founded in 1997 by management expert James P. Womack, Ph.D., as a nonprofit research, education, publishing, and conference company with a mission to advance lean thinking around the world. We teach courses, hold management seminars, write and publish books and workbooks, and organize public and private conferences. We use the surplus revenues from these activities to conduct research projects and support other lean initiatives such as the Lean Education Academic Network, the Lean Global Network, and the Healthcare Value Leaders Network. Visit LEI at lean.org for more information.

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