(Productivity Press: Boca Raton, FL) -- Traditional accounting systems have become inadequate for today’s global manufacturing environment. They are too complex and too focused on past performance. As manufacturing techniques change and become less labor intensive, accounting methods must also evolve. Regardless of what you call it, lean accounting is a management accounting system that should be part of every worker’s daily activities.

The Controller as Lean Leader: A Novel on Changing Behavior with a Lean Cost Management System by Sue Elizabeth Sondergelt (Productivity Press, 2012) delineates the differences between cost accounting and cost management. It uses a story format to present a compilation of experiences; some good, some bad, and some humorous. The story follows a fictional manufacturing entity embarking on a lean change management journey for the second time—having failed at its first attempt at lean implementation a few years earlier. As the story progresses, readers gain an understanding of what the company will do differently this time around to ensure it doesn’t slip backward again as the transformation unfolds.

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