Throughput Accounting.

Start writing...I’ve just finished reading a book. It was the type of book that you pick up and you cannot put down (other than to perform the mandatory tasks that running a house and looking after a family entail). Even the much-awaited new series of one of my favourite television programmes couldn’t tempt me away from my book.

Now obviously I’m telling you this for a reason. I love reading and it’s not unusual to find me glued to a book for several days, if it’s a good one. But you’ve gathered by now that the book I’ve been reading was not the usual Man Booker or Orange prize fiction novel that you might ordinarily find tucked away in my handbag. It was in fact The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement by Eli Goldratt and Jeff Cox. If by now you’ve settled quickly into the belief that I must conform to society’s expectations of your typical ‘number crunching’ accountant of which – by the way – I’ve met few in reality, you are wrong. So what then, you may ask, makes this book so different from the image that the title conjures up? Let me tell you all about it.

The Goal, originally published back in 1984, presents the theory of constraints and throughput accounting within the context of a novel. It tells the story of Alex Rogo, a plant manager at a fictional manufacturing company called UniCo, which is facing imminent closure unless Alex can turn the loss-making plant into a profitable one within three months. In his attempt to do so, Alex is forced to question the whole belief in the US at the time that success in manufacturing is represented by a 100% efficient factory (ie everyone and every machine is busy 100% of the time), which keeps cost per unit as low as possible.

To be honest, before I read the book, I wasn’t really convinced about throughput accounting – although the theory of constraints has always made perfect sense to me. But, having read about both in the context of a very believable plant that was representative of many at the time, my views have changed. It’s easy to stand in a classroom and lecture about throughput accounting and criticise it for being ‘nothing new’, but what we have to remember is, back in 1984, this was new, and for those companies that adopted it, it made a huge difference.

I’m aware that, if I want you to share my renewed interest in throughput accounting, I need to tell you more about the story that gripped me. If I don’t do this, you’ll just go away having read yet another article about throughput accounting, and any doubts that you have about its relevance today will remain the same. On the other hand, I’m also aware that, when sitting professional exams, you need to have a working knowledge of throughput accounting that you can apply in the exam hall. Consequently, I’ve decided that, in this first article, I’ll summarise the story contained in The Goal, bringing out some of the basic principles of the theory of constraints and throughput accounting. Then, in the second article, I’ll talk you through a practical approach to questions on throughput accounting.