Can lean management and traditional management co-exist or does one defeat the other?
JW. These approaches are very different so it’s a bit hard to imagine how a company could operate in both modes at the same time: No value-stream managers and silo functions versus strong value-stream managers guiding the product across functions; management by results (particularly financial measures) versus management by processes; etc. However, it is certainly possible to start with a few experiments and this is likely to be the way any organization migrates from mass production management to lean management. If these show promise it is much easier to try additional experiments and eventually critical mass can be achieved. Q. What is the role of finance in a transformation to lean management? JW. At the minimum traditional financial metrics need to be removed from day-to-day management decisions about key processes. And, in fact, this is what Toyota does. It has a very conventional financial accounting system using standard cost for allocation of overheads. But operating managers do
