Customer Reviews

Throughput Accounting: A Guide to Constraint Management

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Coming from someone how has been implementing Throughput Accounting and TOC / Constraint Management for over 10 years, I can say with experience that this is hands down the best treatment of the topic I've ever read. It's written by and from the perspective of a CFO / Accountant. It addresses the use of Throughput Accounting in all aspects of decisions that people in finance have to make, including capital budgeting.

I no accountant yet Steven Bragg leads me to believe that throughput accounting is much easier to grasp than GAAP accounting. It also seems so more "natural" than activity based costing; for example. There are many differences between throughput accounting and "regular" accounting and here you get to read "what" and "why" and more importantly "how" to reconcile the both as GAAP accounting won't disappear.

There is a section on financial analysis where we are taken through a series of decisions to evaluate and how throughput accounting models can help us solve them. It's quite simple and most questions are answered using the same basic tool. Budgeting and control also have sections of their own.

My favorite part of the book after financial analysis was performance measurement. The author discusses twenty indicators with their strengths and weaknesses. While no single indicator alone "says it all," combined they could make a wonderful dashboard(s).

Though not as light as other book on TOC, this one is nevertheless a must.

As an engineer, I found the definitions not concise enough, though written in simple enough language, the concepts in some portions were unclear to me. More examples from an engineering perspective may enlighten me further. The author drew his examples from the manufacturing process. This were clear. But again, he did not dwell on the metric usage, this would have helped for people from non accounting backgrounds. Though the same may be said for metric usage, but I believe that metric usage is widely practised across professions and may have helped to clarify the concept.

This is a great book, clear language and concepts.
Usually the books of this matter are complicated and disorganized, in this book you find a logical sequence of the themes and the theory and examples are very clear.

Son pocos los libros de Teoría de Restricciones. Este es uno bueno, da un resumen de la metodología y abunda en muchos ejemplos de decisiones mal tomadas con el uso de la contabilidad tradicional, pero todos son casos específicos de considerar los costos fijos prorrateados a los productos para tomar decisiones que no afectan los costos fijos. De ahí que sean fijos. Recomiendo la lectura de este libro para todos aquellos que toman decisiones a partir de datos financieros.