Lean production has provoked significant changes in companies. These changes have not being followed by the economic management systems, which are developed based on mistaken assumptions made by mass production which argues that isolated local optimizations can lead to the global optimization of the company. In this way, it can be affirmed that cost accounting cannot provide the necessary information for decision making in lean companies. On the other hand, consistency is evidenced between the principles of the lean production and the assumptions that support the throughput accounting of the Theory of Constraints. Therefore, the objective of this article is to present arguments that corroborate these assertions and justify the necessity for the use of the throughput accounting as a theoretical basis for the proposal of an economic management method for lean production.
Lean production; Cost accounting; Throughput accounting
