By reducing materials handling, warehousing, and inspection, JIT systems reduce overhead costs. JIT systems also aid in the direct tracing of some costs usually classified as indirect. For example, the use of manufacturing cells makes it cost-effective to trace materials handling, machine operating, and inspection costs to specific products or product families made in these cells. These costs then become direct costs of those products or product families. Also, the use of multiskilled workers in these cells allows the costs of setup, maintenance, and quality inspection to be traced as direct costs. These changes have prompted some companies using JIT to adopt simplified product-costing methods that dovetail with JIT production and that are less costly to operate than the traditional costing systems described in Chapters 4, 7, 8, and 18. We examine two of these methods next: backflush costing and lean accounting.