Reinventing the CFO: How Financial Managers Can Transform Their Roles And Add Greater Value

CHAPTER FOUR

THE CFO AS WARRIOR AGAINST WASTE

True efficiency improvement comes when we produce zero waste and bring the percentage of work to 100 percent.

—Taiichi Ohno

SOME CFOS GIVE the impression that the war on waste has been won (surveys show that cost reduction has fallen down the CFO wish list). Nothing could be further from the truth. There is strong evidence to suggest that huge amounts of work in every type of organization add no value for the customer. Nor is this non-value-adding work particular to the production process. It occurs in research departments, in sales divisions, and in administrative departments. One leading U.S. IT vendor, for example, found that only 10 percent of a salesperson’s time was spent in front of the ...