Job Costing, Job Costing System, Normal costing, ABC Costing
03 Value Stream Costing -...
Transcript of 03 Value Stream Costing -...
3. Value Stream Costing Page 1
3. Value Stream Costing
Objectives
In this module we’re going to cover one of the more radical lean accounting concepts known as value stream costing which is an accounting system of tracking costs and revenues for the entire value stream, as opposed to attributing costs and revenue to individual products as is done in standard costing. Specifically, by the end of this module you’ll understand the motivation for value stream costing including the steps to design and use a value stream income statement. Additionally, by the end of this module, you’ll be able to evaluate the benefits of value stream costing. Now, we’re going to make the assumption that your organization has already identified its value streams. As such, feel free to review our Transforming Your Value Streams course prior to watching this video which you can find in our School of Lean.
Why Value Stream Costing? OK, let’s get things started by discussing why lean thinking organizations transition to value stream costing instead of a more traditional standard costing system. This is important because traditional standard costing has been around for a long time and many people in your organization may argue to stick with it because it’s used to determine selling price, analyze costs, evaluate product mix, and provide valuation for cost of goods sold and inventory. Now, we’ll address each of these concerns in future lessons… but for this module we’d like to introduce two reasons for making the change. The first reason is that your organization should now be structured around value streams instead of the traditional silo’d organizational structures that are typically vertical and focused on functional departments. This change in structure often helps an organization see immediate benefits, but as the low hanging fruit of simple waste reduction is gone, it becomes much more important to have changes in the accounting
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information used to evaluate and improve organizational performance. The second reason for transitioning to Value Stream Costing is that traditional accounting information is usually confusing and too late to be helpful. In fact, a tremendous amount of time and energy is spent collecting data throughout the month, pulling it together in reports for managers, and comparing this information to predictions that are no longer relevant. Some even liken managing a business by end of month reports to attempting to drive a car while only looking into the rear mirror… you may get away with this for awhile but eventually you’re in for some serious trouble. Conversely, in a lean organization, the focus is on process improvement where financial information is needed quickly which is exactly where Value Stream Costing shines. With this said, your organization might have recently started practicing lean or perhaps you’ve been on the journey for a while. No matter the situation, if you’re still using standard cost accounting and reporting variances each month, you’re not going to see the full benefits lean offers.
Preparing for Value Stream Costing OK, so those are some reasons why value stream costing can add value… now, let’s turn our attention to how we can implement it within our organization. Now, we’re sharing an 8-‐step process throughout this module, but we want to make it clear that there’s no cookie cutter approach to value stream costing. You’ll need to make decisions that work best for your organization… but if you take the time and follow this 8 step approach you’ll be on your way to designing a value stream
costing system that eliminates wasteful transactions and is more cost effective than a traditional standard costing system. And, to be clear, it will meet external GAAP reporting requirements while providing timely and useful information to the value stream. But, again, please remember to keep your auditors informed as you’re making changes and moving away from standard cost accounting as this will save you a lot of time trying to explain things later during an annual audit! With that said, the first step is to identify the resources consumed by each value stream, and because
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this involves evaluating all resources within the organization this step is implemented at the facility level. We’ll talk about a few questions to ask… but first, we’ll talk about the things that need to be in place for value stream costing to be effective. For value stream costing to be effective, people should be assigned to value streams with as little overlap as possible. Shared service departments such as quality, maintenance, engineering, and, in some cases, sales should be minimized and moved to within the value streams whenever possible. In fact, you should try to get each value stream to be a stand-‐alone business… and while this isn’t always practical, it should be the goal. Next, production monuments, such as a large shared paint booth in the middle of the factory, should also be minimized and your processes should be stable. Now this doesn’t mean your processes are no longer being improved because perfection will never be achieved but a basic level of stability should be in place. And, finally, inventory levels should be relatively stable. Assigning costs to value streams and holding allocations to a minimum is very important and will likely require significant changes to your organization’s chart of accounts; but the value of having relevant, timely, and easy to understand information that helps your value streams continuously improve the value they deliver to customers will be well worth the effort required to make the changes.
1. Identify Resources Consumed in the Value Stream Now, a good place to start is with your most valuable resources: your people. Where do your employees perform most of their duties? If an employee works in more than one value stream, how should their costs be shared across values steams? For example, if 4 engineers are all helping with 2 value streams, it might makes sense to assign the costs of two engineers to each value stream; but you should also consider the lost productivity inherent in "sharing” a resource such as an engineer between two value streams. Put another way, two value streams might have conflicting priorities that will require time and effort to sort things out… as such, reducing the need for sharing will often improve productivity and can thereby justify adding people like engineers so they don't have to be split and can truly become dedicated to a specific value stream. Similar consideration must be given to functional leaders who oversee multiple value streams.
2. Design Value Stream Statement Format Once resources are assigned to value streams, it’s time to design the value stream statement format. As with any good design process, the first steps are to understand who is going to use the value stream
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statements, what actions and decisions do they make, and what information do they need to take action? A primary user of the value stream statement will be the cross-‐functional value stream team. Now, the different pieces of the Value stream statement will vary depending on the type of business you’re in, but here are some examples of those used by a typical production facility… value stream revenue, value stream costs, material cost, conversion costs, and facility costs. Again, these are just examples so you’ll need to fine-‐tune these for your business. Now, before we move on, we’d like to explain what conversion costs are in the context of value stream costing. They’re simply the costs of transforming, or converting, raw materials into finished goods, and they include things such as direct labor. In the next module on inventory management, we’ll discuss how and why your organization can use conversion costs and stop using standard cost and variance information for labor and overhead eliminating a tremendous amount of wasteful transactions while also providing “plain English” information that’s more useful, timely, and understandable while also remaining GAAP compliant. While value stream costing tries to avoid allocating costs whenever possible, if costs must be allocated, as is the case with some facility costs, it’s important to allocate these costs in a manner that motivates the types of improvements a lean organization seeks. One way to do this is to assign them by the square footage of a particular value stream. This will motivate the value steam team to seek ways to reduce their footprint and free up space capacity for other value adding activities; but remember, when making allocations you’re using your best judgment, so be mindful that these allocations shouldn’t be treated as if they are precise; in other words, don’t track these down to the penny if it’s not reasonable to do so.
3. Standardize Collection of Weekly Data OK, the third Value Stream Costing step is to standardize collection of weekly data. It’s very important to have standards for collecting the weekly value stream data, as this data is going to eventually be compiled into a statement for the entire facility. You might consider assigning one person the responsibility of ensuring the standards are followed and the data is collected. Some of the things to consider are What data are we collecting?, Why are we collecting it?, How is the data collected?, and Who is responsible for the data? With this said, when you’re first getting started with Lean Accounting it may be difficult to measure certain things on a weekly basis due to the existing systems you have access to. So do the best you can and continuously strive to improve your data collection systems. Here’s an example of standardized weekly data collection. For example, manufacturing companies may want to monitor units shipped which, in this example, would be obtained from the “Units by Week” file located in the Value Stream metrics folder by the value stream leaders.
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Here’s an example of what a weekly value stream costing template may look like.
Keep in mind each value stream typically maintains their own weekly records which are then consolidated with the other value streams at the end of the month. Collecting information frequently like this makes the information available in a more timely manner meaning the internal customer gets the information quickly allowing them take immediate action. Like we just mentioned, it may be challenging to get some cost information, like personnel costs, on a weekly basis so don’t get discouraged if you’re only able to report some items monthly at the beginning of your Lean Accounting journey. With this said, to make the weekly information collected even more useful, the categories can be broken down even further as we see here. We’re showing just a portion of the statement so you can get the idea. Again, you’ll want to customize these statements for your organization.
4. Compile the Value Stream Statements OK, now it’s time to compile the individual Value Stream statements which is the 4th step. A simple spreadsheet will work to compile all of the data into the value stream statement format. While compiling the data into value stream statements, remember, when we reach the 7th step in this process, all statements are rolled up to a facility-‐wide statement, which means that total facility revenues should equal the sum of the total revenues for each value stream and the total facility costs should equal the sum of the total costs for each value stream plus the sustaining costs and any other applicable items such as inventories and corporate allocations.
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5. Select the Reporting Mechanism Next, the 5th step is to select the reporting mechanism. The whole purpose of collecting and compiling data is so the information can be used to guide future decisions, which means creating reports. But, these reports must be of value to whomever needs the information. So, the reports need to consider the statement users, the frequency of reporting, and where the reported information should be located so users can access it. Often, the weekly value stream statements are provided to the core value stream teams and other plant-‐level managers; but, they’re also placed on value stream metric boards for everyone to view.
6. Test It! This level of transparency is an important aspect of a lean culture that respects and empowers people. And as with every process and outcome in a lean organization, there’s always room to improve which is why step 6 has us testing the format! In other words, we need to make sure to schedule time with statement users to test how well the value stream metrics are working, as well as the process of collecting the necessary data.
7. Roll Up to Facility Statement All right, once we’re comfortable with the individual value stream statements, it’s time to roll them up into one plant or facility statement. And as we mentioned earlier, when all the value stream statements are rolled up to a facility-‐wide statement, total facility revenues should equal the sum of the value stream revenues and total facility costs should equal the sum of the value stream costs plus sustaining costs, changes in inventories, corporate allocations and any other items not identified specifically with a value stream.
8. Obtain Feedback From All Statement Users And last, but certainly not least, as with the individual value stream statements, we’ll want to obtain feedback from all statement users which is the 8th step. It’s important to ensure we seek user feedback at all levels of the organization.
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Value Stream Costing Example OK, to wrap this module up let’s walk through a Value Stream Costing example. Here’s an example value stream income statement for an entire facility.
The revenue and costs from each of the value streams, along with costs that are not specific to a particular value stream, which we’ll call sustaining costs, are rolled up onto this one statement, making it easy to see what’s going on in the facility. Let’s have a closer look at how this is done by examining value stream 1. Monthly sales for value stream 1 were 155,350. The various costs and expenses assigned to this value stream totaled 76,214 resulting in a profit of 79,136 resulting in a value stream 1 return on sales of 50.94%. Value streams 2 and 3 are done the same way and then totaled up for a total facility perspective. Now, we’d like to stress that the costs in each value stream are directly related to activities in that value stream. Allocations such as corporate overhead are added at the facility level in order to avoid distorting direct product-‐related costs in the value stream, which can lead to incorrect decisions. Inventory changes are also accounted for at the facility level. One of the key problems with a traditional income statement is that a reduction in inventory represents a cost, while in the lean world it’s a desirable reduction of a key waste. Therefore, once again, we want to separate this inventory figure from the value stream analysis since it will, in fact, reduce profit.
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As a lean transformation becomes more mature, inventory becomes a small part of most operations, and this potential distortion is minimized. Now, in our example, once the final facility profit has been calculated the overall facility return on sales figure of 24.3% can be calculated. Lastly, while the facility-‐wide statement is typically done and reported monthly individual value streams may choose to track their revenue and costs weekly and then total the month and carry those monthly totals over to the facility wide statement. Collecting and reporting more frequently makes the information available in a more timely manner; in other words, the internal customer will be getting the information they want quickly, which makes the information more valuable. So, as an example, here’s the weekly statement for Value Stream 1.
As you can see, the same principles of keeping manufacturing products flowing at the rate of customer demand can be applied to internal reporting. Collecting data at more frequent intervals can help efforts to create stability and even flow, however; remember that one core concept in lean accounting is to reduce transaction burden. So, make sure that the effort to collect this data is offset by the value it creates. OK, obviously this was an intense module with lots of numbers and figures. Please feel free to review this module as many times as you need… after all, the ability to watch and review videos as many times as you’d like is what makes video based training so effective. With this said, once you’re comfortable with Value Stream Costing it’s time to turn our attention to Inventory management which is exactly what we’ll discuss in the next module… so, we’ll speak to you soon.