The Role of Production Costs in Ensuring the Quality of Economic Agents Based on the Principles of Thrift

The article shows an alternative solution to the issue of ensuring the quality of goods and services by means of lean production. It is based on a systematic approach and the fundamentals of the new institutional economic theory which involve factors that are not considered by the classical microeconomic theory. The paper evaluates the process of information and analytical support of economic agents’ interaction which is the basis of the organization of lean production. The article proves the relationship between the quality characteristic of the object of exchange, expressed in the form of transformational and transaction costs, and the target function of the main economic agents. It is determined that these costs characterize the achieved level of "production thrift". It is proposed to form an analytical concept of quality management, based on the theory of energy dynamics, which allows solving the main issues of the lean production process by harmonizing the processes of interaction of the main economic agents. The research results presented in the article formed the basis for the Lean Manufacturing Online Course supported by the grant competition of the Vladimir Potanin 2020/2021 Scholarship program.