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Lean Accounting

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Submitted By beekeeper21
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The Principles, Benefits and Compliance of Lean Accounting As a way to reduce costs, manufacturing businesses today are looking for a leaner approach to production and are focusing on the overall process of producing an item to eventually sell to a consumer. This process is called the value stream, which is defined in Cost Accounting: A Managerial Emphasis as “the value-added activities needed to design, manufacture, and deliver a given product or product line to customers” (Horngren, Datar, & Rajan, 2014, p. 635). With the assistance of technology advancements to support with the communication of the different components of the value stream, processes have been developed, like Just in Time (JIT) production, that allow for the lean production of merchandise. Dan Woods describes this lean production process, in an article published in Forbes:
“In a lean process, the demand signals pull the materials through the flow processes and the right number of products is created with as little waste as possible. When all the suppliers of materials are also making their processes lean, the result is that the entire supply chain is extremely responsive and efficient. “ (Wood, 2009)
To go along with this lean production system, lean accounting was developed as “a costing method that focuses on value streams, as distinguished from individual products or departments, thereby eliminating waste in the accounting process” (Horngren, Datar, & Rajan, 2014, p. 635). This paper will summarize the main principles of the lean accounting method and will provide insight as to how a company’s balance sheet and operating income will be affected and can benefit from using this costing method. This paper will also review an article about proper lean accounting and discuss several steps to implementing a lean approach to accounting.
Analysis
Lean production is focused on the

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