In 1987, H. Thomas Johnson and Robert S. Kaplan published Relevance Lost, describing how management accounting systems had become obsolete. In response to Relevance Lost, Robert Kaplan and Robin Cooper introduced and championed activity-based costing (ABC). H. Thomas Johnson was invited by Toyota to their first U. S. plant in Georgetown, Kentucky. After studying their plant he wrote Relevance Regained. He maintained that cost is an effect, and to manage costs you need to measure and manage the causes of costs rather than the costs themselves (I'm paraphrasing here). Should production cell measures of Practical Lean accounting replace variance analysis based on standard costs? Should the production cell measures be used in tandem with budget-based variance analysis? For those of you familiar with ABC does your response change if ABC standards replace the traditional direct labor hour or machine hour standards?