ABSTRACT
Companies going Lean may even find that transaction volumes increase dramatically. Some areas where this can happen are
◾ Purchase orders, receiving reports, and invoices for daily deliveries from suppliers
◾ Work order volumes and batch tickets to deal with a larger number of small batches and single-piece part flow
◾ Increased shipping documents and customer invoices to process daily shipments to customers
So a Lean company needs to manage and control Lean in a way other than by creating paper or computer transactions every time material is moved or altered during the production process. Otherwise, the job of creating and processing transactions to control manufacturing is likely to mushroom, even as manufacturing itself becomes Lean. That is why we say that transactions are to Lean Accounting as inventory is to Lean manufacturing. Transactions are pure waste and for the most part are in place to bring control into a manufacturing process that is out of control.
