Faculty Coverage and Familiarity with Lean Enterprise Concepts

Castellano and Burrows recently reported on a survey of 352 faculty listed in Hasselback's directory with cost or managerial accounting as a teaching or research interest (Castellano, J. F. and R. Burrows. 2011. Relevance lost: The practice/classroom gap. Management Accounting Quarterly (Winter): 41-48.)

The authors' motivation for the survey was based on their own textbook review process that indicated little or no coverage of lean enterprise concepts in the leading cost and managerial accounting textbooks. The results of their textbook review process provided two purposes for the survey. The first purpose was to determine whether management accounting faculty were covering lean enterprise topics in cost/managerial accounting courses, as well as the survey respondents' familiarity with various lean enterprise concepts. An additional purpose was to determine the extent that the absence of lean enterprise topics in the textbooks was being supplemented with IMA materials, journal articles, outside speakers, or student projects.

Survey results indicating the extent of faculty coverage and familiarity with lean enterprise topics were generated with a set of questions related to eight lean enterprise terms or topics. These terms, or topics, and the percentage of faculty who either indicated that the topic was not important, or that they were not familiar with the topic are as follows: Value stream mapping 44%, Value stream costing 43%, Lean manufacturing 26%, Lean accounting 33%, Toyota production system 48%, Toyota Way principles 53%, Visual control systems 45%, Performance measurements in a lean environment 25%.

The percentages of faculty indicating that the topics were not covered in the textbook that they were using were: Value stream mapping 65%, Value stream costing 62%, Lean manufacturing 38%, Lean accounting 51%, Toyota production system 70%, Toyota Way principles 77%, Visual control systems 73%, Performance measurements in a lean environment 54%.

The percentages of faculty indicating that they were not supplementing the textbooks were: Value stream mapping 84%, Value stream costing 84%, Lean manufacturing 68%, Lean accounting 72%, Toyota production system 83%, Toyota Way principles 90%, Visual control systems 87%, Performance measurements in a lean environment 70%.

An explanation for these survey results might be related to the terminology used in the survey, rather than the absence of familiarity with lean enterprise concepts since most of the lean enterprise concepts (focused factory, flexible manufacturing, cellular manufacturing, demand pull systems, kanban production control, non-financial performance measurements, etc.) have been in the just-in-time literature for over 25 years and there have been hundreds of articles published in the accounting literature related to these topics.

I would be interested to know what others think about this survey, but one thing is clear. There is no shortage of materials that could be used to supplement the concepts included in the Castellano-Borrows survey.

For example, a few articles are listed below in the order of the terms used by Castellano and Burrows. All of the summaries appear on the MAAW site and are offered here to supplement any management accounting course or self study program. However, the full text of all of these articles are available to most faculty and students via their university library data base subscriptions to sites such as ProQuest.

Value stream mapping
Baggaley, B. and B. Maskell. 2003. Value stream management for lean companies, Part I. Journal of Cost Management (March/April): 23-27. Summary - http://maaw.info/ArticleSummaries/ArtSumBaggaleyMaskell03(1).htm

Baggaley, B. and B. Maskell. 2003. Value stream management for lean companies, Part II. Journal of Cost Management (May/June): 24-30. Summary - http://maaw.info/ArticleSummaries/ArtSumBaggaleyMaskell03(2).htm

Womack, J. P. and D. T. Jones. 1996. Beyond Toyota: How to root out waste and pursue perfection. Harvard Business Review (September-October): 140-144, 146, 148-152, 154, 156, 158. Summary - http://maaw.info/ArticleSummaries/ArtSumWomackJones96.htm

Value stream costing
Baggaley, B. and B. Maskell. 2003. Value stream management for lean companies, Part II. Journal of Cost Management (May/June): 24-30. Summary - http://maaw.info/ArticleSummaries/ArtSumBaggaleyMaskell03(2).htm

Brosnahan, J. P. 2008. Unleash the power of lean accounting. Journal of Accountancy (July): 60-66. Summary - http://maaw.info/ArticleSummaries/ArtSumBrosnahan2008.htm


Lean manufacturing
Brosnahan, J. P. 2008. Unleash the power of lean accounting. Journal of Accountancy (July): 60-66. Summary - http://maaw.info/ArticleSummaries/ArtSumBrosnahan2008.htm


See MAAW's JIT section - http://maaw.info/JITMain.htm

Swank, C. K. 2003. The lean service machine. Harvard Business Review (October): 123-129. (How lean production principles are used by a life insurance company). Summary - http://maaw.info/ArticleSummaries/ArtSumSwank2003.htm


Lean accounting
See What is Lean Accounting? - http://maaw.info/LeanAccounting.htm

Baggaley, B. and B. Maskell. 2003. Value stream management for lean companies, Part II. Journal of Cost Management (May/June): 24-30. Summary - http://maaw.info/ArticleSummaries/ArtSumBaggaleyMaskell03(2).htm

Maskell, B. H. and B. L. Baggaley. 2006. Lean accounting: What's it all about? Target Magazine 22(1): 35-43. Note - http://maaw.info/ArticleSummaries/ArtSumMaskellBagalley06.htm and Article link - http://ame.org/MagazineOnlinePDF.aspx?artid=3303

Toyota Production System
Spear, S. and H. K. Bowen. 1999. Decoding the DNA of the Toyota production system. Harvard Business Review (September-October): 97-106. Summary - http://maaw.info/ArticleSummaries/ArtSumSpearBowen99.htm

Spear, S. J. 2004. Learning to lead at Toyota. Harvard Business Review (May): 78-86. Summary - http://maaw.info/ArticleSummaries/ArtSumSpear2004.htm


Johnson, H. T. and A. Broms. 2000. Profit Beyond Measure: Extraordinary Results through Attention to Work and People. New York: The Free Press. Summary - http://maaw.info/ArticleSummaries/ArtSumJohnsonBroms2000.htm


Toyota Way principles
Liker, J. 2003. The Toyota Way: 14 Management Principles From The World's Greatest Manufacturer. McGraw-Hill. Briefly: 1. Base decisions on a long-term strategy, 2. Create a continuous process flow, 3. Use pull systems, 4. Level the work load to minimize waste, 5. Stop the production line to fix problems, 6. Standardize processes and tasks, 7. Use visual controls, 8. Use reliable thoroughly tested technology, 9. Develop leaders, 10. Develop teams, 11. Respect partners and suppliers, 12. Use go-and-see for yourself management, 13. Use consensus decisions, 14. Become a learning organization through continuous improvement.
Visual control systems

Goodson, R. E. 2002. Read a plant - fast. Harvard Business Review (May): 105-113. (How the rapid plant assessment (RPA) process can tell you if a factory is truly lean in as little as 30 minutes. The process includes two tools: The RPA rating sheet includes 11 categories for assessing leanness, and the RPA questionnaire includes 20 yes or no questions). Summary - http://maaw.info/ArticleSummaries/ArtSumGoodson2002.htm

Most of the articles listed above mention visual controls.

Performance measurements in a lean environment
Fullerton, R. R. 2003. Performance measurement and reward systems in JIT and non-JIT firms. Cost Management (November/December): 40-47. Summary - http://maaw.info/ArticleSummaries/ArtSumFullerton03.htm


Fullerton, R. R. and C. S. McWatters. 2002. The role of performance measures and incentive systems in relation to the degree of JIT implementation. Accounting, Organizations and Society 27(8): 711-735. Summary - http://maaw.info/ArticleSummaries/ArtSumFullertonMcWatters02.htm

Maskell, B. H. and B. L. Baggaley. 2006. Lean accounting: What's it all about? Target Magazine 22(1): 35-43. Note - http://maaw.info/ArticleSummaries/ArtSumMaskellBagalley06.htm and Article link - http://ame.org/MagazineOnlinePDF.aspx?artid=3303

See What is Lean Accounting? - http://maaw.info/LeanAccounting.htm and the just-in-time section in MAAW's Chapter 8 - http://maaw.info/Chapter8.htm#Process%20Oriented%20Performance%20Measurements