Role for financial information for continuous improvement Consider an organiza¬

tion that has empowered its employees, asking them to improve the quality, produc¬ tivity, and responsiveness of their processses that involve repetitive work. This work could arise in a manufacturing setting, such as assembling cars or producing chemi¬ cals, or in a service setting, such as processing invoices or responding to customer or¬ ders and requests. Clearly the workers would benefit from feedback on the quality (defects, yields) and process times of the work they were doing to suggest where they could make improvements. Identify the role, if any, for sharing financial information as well with these employees to help them in their efforts to improve quality, pro¬ ductivity, and process times. Be specific about the types of financial information that would be helpful, and the specific decisions or actions that could be made better by supplementing physical and operational information with financial information.

(LO 4, 5)