The CFO as Warrior Against Waste
“With more time to add value, the CFO and the finance team are able to focus on eliminating huge swathes of costs that have remained unchallenged for years. The aim should be to flatten the hierarchy, centralize and standardize transaction processing, and ensure that all projects are necessary and add value. The CFO must also learn and apply the lessons from lean thinking, a concept elegantly summarized by Taiichi Ohno, architect of Toyota Production System: ‘All we are doing is looking at the time line from the moment the customer gives us an order to the point when we collect the cash. And we are reducing that time line by removing the non-value-added wastes.’ …” – Jeremy Hope
1. Where inside your organization have you focused on applying lean thinking and eliminating costs?
2. What has the elimination of these costs meant for the organization?
3. Can you quantify how much waste was eliminated?