Report on Lean Summit Africa
The summit, the third consecutive one held in Africa, was organized by the Lean Institute Africa which is based in South Africa and is a member of the Lean Global Network. The venue of the summit was Cape Town International Conference Centre, a modern structure equipped with a lot of facilities and services to accommodate a wide variety of summits, seminars, conferences and workshops simultaneously. It is flanked by two tourist and historic attractions: the Table Mountain and the Water Front.
The duration of the summit was three days from Monday September 21 to Wednesday September 23. Workshops were held on Monday while presentations and plenary sessions were held on Tuesday and Wednesday. Starting from this year and thanks to De Beers’ sponsorship, a special trophy will be awarded every year to a South African Company which will achieve the best results in the lean transformation process.
The summit was designed to promote the adoption of Lean Transformation as a means of improving service and quality while reducing cost and waste in any organization. Hence the theme “Lean for Lean Times and Beyond.”
Top gurus in the global Lean movement made presentations, most noticeably:
• Jim Womack – Founder and President of The Lean Enterprise Institute USA.
• David Brunt – A key member of Dan Jones’ Team in the UK
• Michael Ballè – Co-founder of Project Lean Enterprise – Europe.
About two hundred and fifty delegates from different sectors of the economy, both public and private, were present at the summit. Ten workshops were held on various aspects of lean transformation.
GC & Partners was in charge of the workshop on the theme; “Lean Accounting: The New frontier of Management Accounting.” The workshop was led by Nicola Luca Gianesin, CEO of GC&P, with Michael Sheriff as assistant. The main objectives of the workshop was to make participants aware that a lean transformation is incomplete without lean accounting.
Applying Lean Accounting a company can achieve two goals: simplicity and the capability to measure the true benefits of a lean transformation.
Some of the major topics dealt with were:
1. Why traditional accounting is harmful to lean transformation.
2. Concepts and Methods of Lean Accounting
3. Best approach to implement lean accounting and problems involved
About 10% of the participants attended the workshop from various enterprises, among which:
• Coca cola – Swaziland
• Standard Bank – South Africa
• VSC Solutions – South Africa
• Powertech Transformers – South Africa
• Areosud Aviation – South Africa