Accounting Headed for a Diet?

The Financial Executive Institute's Summit last week featured discussion of "lean" accounting. The concept of lean accounting comes from lean management, a management which weds favorite management concepts of the 1990s such as just-in-time inventory, total quality management and others. For accounting, lean means getting away from batch accounting and restructuring accounting and computer systems. A Lean Accounting Summit, held in Orlando around the autumn equinox, will feature such speakers as James Womack, arguably the guru of lean manaagement; Orry Fiume, who spoke about lean accounting at the FEI summit; Richard Schonberger and Norman Bodek.

Though I cannot a imagine a massive revolution in accounting procedure based on lean management techniques, I could conceive of some techniques gaining favor, especially in manufacturing businesses. Therefore, CPAs who audit manufacturing businesses and controllers of manufacturing businesses at least need to monitor lean accounting to see whether it is gaining momentum.