A seed was planted…
More than 15 years ago, Jim Huntzinger, Summit President, was asked to do an ROI analysis of a lean initiative of which he was part. It was during this process he realized that traditional cost accounting practices were fundamentally flawed and not supportive of a lean enterprise. Not being an accountant, Huntzinger chose lean accounting as his master’s thesis to better understand the issue. He developed a network of more than 20 authors and researchers that also understood the problem with traditional accounting in the lean enterprise.

The seed takes root…
While employed by Flexware Innovation in a lean consulting division of the company, Huntzinger teamed with Dwayne Butcher, Flexware’s Marketing Manager at the time, to plan and promote the first annual Lean Accounting Summit in September 2005 in Dearborn, MI. The network of thought-leaders Jim had developed made up the team of presenters. With only 5 months of promoting the Summit, registrations reached 320 and the Summit was officially sold-out as the hotel and conference space reached capacity.

Summit begins to blossom…
After the success of the Summit, Flexware spun off the Summit as a separate entity, which is now managed by Huntzinger and Butcher. They continued planning and promoting the second annual Summit that was held in September of 2006 at Walt Disney World. The second Summit drew 520 attendees and was heralded as a major success by attendees, sponsors, and presenters.

Today
Organizers are now planning for the 3rd annual Summit with a goal of growing the Summit to 700 attendees. Significant changes are being planned for the next Summit based on the maturity of the movement and feedback from attendees.