Japanese management accounting practices and the effects of assembly and process automation

This paper identifies several important Japanese management accounting practices used in advanced Factory Automation (FA) manufacturing environments. The survey revealed that Japanese management accounting systems for product costing and inventory valuation did not employ newer or more innovative methods than western manufacturers use. Instead, the firms surveyed appear to have put their innovating effort into cost analysis for decision-making and cost control by use of unique management ‘accounting’ techniques such as target costing, ‘budget system’, and engineering/performance enhancement methods (for example, TQC, TPM, JIT, VE and ROS). The developments in these areas seem to be carefully integrated with and supporting of a wider array of strategic actions or systems (e.g., JIT, TQC, investment in plant and equipment). This combination of sophisticated planning coupled with straightforward, simple control systems depends on the ability of the employee to understand how his or her actions map into the strategic goals of the company. As a result, describing and communicating the organization's goals and strategies becomes the focus of management effort, not designing complex systems that reflect the idiosyncracies of markets and production processes.