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Suarez 2012
Suarez 2012
To cite this article: Manuel F. Surez-Barraza , Tricia Smith & Su Mi Dahlgaard-Park (2012) Lean
Service: A literature analysis and classification, Total Quality Management & Business Excellence,
23:3-4, 359-380, DOI: 10.1080/14783363.2011.637777
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14783363.2011.637777
The service sector in the USA accounts for 80% of gross domestic product. However, in
spite of the pivotal role of the service sector in the US economy and its impact on daily
life, the level of productivity in this sector has been much lower than that of the
manufacturing area. This situation has been in existence for some time, but in the
current context, there are growing external pressures to reduce costs, increase
flexibility, improve quality and cut down on lead times. Companies are thus turning
their attention to the manufacturing sector with the aim of implementing their
techniques and methods which encourage a lean approach. The purpose of this
article is to review the extant literature on the subject that goes under the umbrellatitle of Lean Service, analyse it, classify it into preliminary categories and suggest
possible gaps in the research literature from the point of view of researchers and
practitioners. The paper systematically categorises the published literature where
the term Lean Service appears, including the early publications on the subject. Then,
the categories are revised and analysed methodically. The research found that the
literature referring to Lean Service can vary widely from the exploration of the
meaning of the concept, its applications (case studies), the setting up of theoretical
concepts (models) to the generation of new definitions. Within each category, certain
gaps have been identified and possible future lines of research which clarify and
distinguish the concept of Lean Service. In addition, within the category of
applications, sub-categories have been identified such as banks and financial
institutions, the health sector, education, the airline industry, and hotels and
restaurants. The paper aspires to be of interest as much to researchers as to
professionals in the service industry, whether they have middle management
responsibilities, or are service managers, and also to all those employees whose
work is related to this sector, with the object of understanding the management of
service organisations from the Lean Service perspective.
Keywords: Lean Thinking; Lean Service; literature review; analysis; classification
1.
Introduction
Due to the extraordinary growth in the service sector during the last two decades many
service organisations now pay attention to the efficiency and effectiveness of their operations (Cavaness & Mannochehri, 1993). However, despite the key role of the service
sector in the American and worldwide economy and society, the productivity of this
sector has been far lower than that of manufacturing. In fact, between 1981 and 1990,
the growth rate in the service sector was only 0.1% a year compared with 3% in the manufacturing sector in the USA (US Bureau of Labour Statistics, 1990, 1991, 1992). This low
2.1
The classification scheme for this study emerged from the parallel and simultaneous exercise of categorising and sub-categorising the collected papers and texts. The result of this
exercise was the grouping of all the articles into the following four main categories:
(1) Exploration of Lean Service (first reflections and foundations). All the literature
reviewed in this category relates to the articles that were the pioneers in the
field, exploring the applications of the concepts in service organisations. Therefore, although the concept of Lean was not used explicitly in these articles, they
can be regarded as providing the foundations of Lean Service.
(2) Creation of the theoretical framework of Lean Service (some models). From 1990
onwards, when the concept of Lean Production or Lean Thinking first entered the
academic arena, different authors gave themselves the task of comparing how
different service organisations went about trying to improve on or innovate the
operational aspects of the services they provided. The first article to refer to
Lean Service in this sense was written by Bowen and Youndahl in 1998, entitled
Lean Service: in defence of the production line approach; this was the first time
the term was used (Radnor, Walley, Stephens, & Bucci, 2006, p. 98) and the article
used examples of service firms like Taco Bell, McDonalds and Southwest Airlines,
putting forward the first arguments for Lean Service.
Figure 1. Bar graph showing the distribution and trends of the publications in the study.
(3) Specific applications of Lean Service (Academic and practitioner case studies).
Managers of service organisations are becoming more and more interested in
how Lean Service methods can be applied and like to read about success stories
regarding their application so they can make use of such techniques to bring
about improvements in their own organisations. In this respect this group of
articles in the research literature is of direct use because it includes various case
studies, by both academics and practitioners, of service firms in health care, education, banks and finance, airlines and hotels and restaurants.
(4) New trends and extensions of Lean Service. Although the term Lean Service is by
no means saturated through popular overuse nor exhausted in the academic literature of empirical and theoretical research, some new trends and extensions of the
term have been noted in the literature reviewed. In this category new uses of the
term Lean Service have been identified relating to Lean-Kaizen Public service, eservice, Total Quality Service, Service Excellence or one possible theoretical evolution of the term known as Service Science.
For obvious reasons it is clear that a strict demarcation between the categories cannot
be drawn since during the analysis of the literature certain areas overlapped with each
other. In addition, some of the articles refer, directly or indirectly, to Lean Service as
having a central or determining meaning in research streams relating to Service
Quality. To view the distribution and scale of the four different categories which were
derived from the publications under review, see the bar graph (Figure 1).
Table 1.
Summary of the coding pattern for the categories and sub-categories and the number of publications.
Sub-category/
category
Category 1
(exploration)
Category 2
(theorybuilding)
Category 3
(applications)
Category 4 (new
trends)
Total
Classical
papers
2a
(80
89)
2b
(90
99)
2c
(00
08)
31
22
60
32
27
80
15
10
28
31
22
32
27
15
10
172
3a
3b
3c
3d
(Health) (Education) (Banks) (Airlines)
3e
4a (Public
(Hotels) service)
4b (e- 4c (Excellence
service)
TSQ)
Total
Category
This section of the article presents a detailed discussion of each category and sub-category
analysed for this study, with the addition of certain critical comments on each one.
3.1 Category (1): exploration of Lean Service (first reflections and foundations)
The four articles in this category show where the authors who first recognised that concepts from manufacturing could possibly be applied to service firms had gained knowledge
of those concepts and techniques, and set out their reflections and explorations of those
first insights. Skinner (1969) recognised that the manufacturing sector led the service
industry in terms of finding ways and mechanisms to improve the productivity of the
organisation; among those techniques were strategies of low costs, quality and flexibility,
all of which were forged in the manufacturing sector. However, the change of thinking and
turn towards the industrialisation of the service sector did not come about, according to
the authors, until the 1970s with two pioneering articles by Levitt (1972, 1976). As Levitt
(1972, p. 52) claimed:
Service will be viewed as something residual to the ultimate reality to a tangible product, to
a specific competence (like evaluating loans, writing insurance policies, giving medical aid,
preparing on-premises foods). Hence, it will have residual respectability, residual attention,
and be left, somehow, for residual performance.
Levitt (1972, 1976) was the first to recognise the potential of adopting Lean Thinking
for the service sector, one which was more or less forgotten in the seventies when manufacturing dominated the economy (Bowen & Youndahl, 1998). In his two articles, Levitt
indicated that the service sector at the time was backward and inefficient when compared
with the focus on mass production techniques in the manufacturing sector. This backwardness and inefficiency derived from the way the service sector was dominated by a bureaucratic model of operations that had been consolidated over years, and which operated in an
environment where the clients wishes or desires were unimportant. Therefore, a focus on
mass production assembly line methods based on a technocratic point of view could represent at that moment in time a solution for bringing about change and improvement in the
service sector (Levitt, 1972).
This classic author showed that if the same care that was taken in the manufacturing
sector was applied in the services sector to aspects like planning, control, quality, improvement and client reaction then the services industry could reach much greater client satisfaction in that period. Using MacDonalds as an example of a firm that had applied this
technocratic standardisation approach to the service they offered to clients, Levitt
(1972, p. 30) concluded that mass production methods or assembly line methods
applied to the service sector would permit this sector to ensure better efficiency in its operations, lower costs and satisfy clients in more specific ways.
3.1.1 Some observations
It is hard to criticise the four articles, each pioneering in the conceptual reflection and
foundation of Lean Service. However, he indicated that service should be seen as a
residual part of a tangible product, as something apart but complementary (Levitt
1972, p. 52). At the same time, he indicated the importance to service of the human
factor. So this division has to fit with his focus on technocratic efficiency for service, as
in a manufacturing assembly line. These two observations by Levitt are contradictory,
3.2
Category (2): creating the theoretical framework of Lean Service (some models)
When the model of the industrialisation of service organisations (with the focus on production lines or mass production) which was first described by Levitt (1972, 1976) and
exemplified by Macdonalds began to lose ground in the mid-1980s and early nineties
(Schlesinger & Heskett, 1991), some publications in the arena of services began a shift
towards a new logic which was ironically reinforced by both the service and the manufacturing sectors; this logic was known as quality service as sustained by the Total Quality
Management (TQM) movement which centred on services not just in terms of production
methods but also with an orientation towards the customer, searching out the best ways
to satisfy his needs and requirements, as TQM preached (Dean & Bowen, 1994). The
shift can be traced from Chase and Garvin (1989) who described in their article Service
factory the forces that had pushed manufacturing firms to rescue service and search for
advantage through service; these forces were the same that gave rise, in the same sector,
to terms like quality, attention to the customer and inter-functional teams. Further, this
shift led to searching out organisational effectiveness in manufacturing, and to the generation of specific models to measure the perceptions, the needs and the expectations of customers like the SERVQUAL of Parasuraman, Zeithaml, and Berry (1988). This journey
through the literature began to open new fields in the knowledge arena of service, such as
Service Marketing or Service Operations, Quality of Service although in practice,
there were many overlaps of practices, techniques and principles.
However, it was not until the end of the 1990s and in the next decade that a theoretical
framework began to be developed in the literature for the specific term lean service.
Some authors had called it re-industrialization of service which can be explained,
according to the literature we analysed, by the appearance of a new management approach
developed in Japan in the 1960s and 1970s known as the Toyota Production System (TPS)
(Ohno, 1978). This approach became known as Lean Production after a study carried out
by two North American researchers studying TPS (Dahlgaard & Dahlgaard-Park, 2006).
The principles of Lean Production that arose in the manufacturing sector were adopted
by two researchers at Thunderbird, the American Graduate School of International Management, who proposed the first theoretical framework for Lean Service (Abdi, Khalili
Shavarini, & Seyed Hoseini, 2006, p. 199). This theory, proposed Bowen and Youndahl
(1998, p. 199), suggested that Lean Service could be present when certain principles
could be discerned in an organisation. These principles are: (1) Flexibility and responsiveness; (2) focus on individual customers; (3) value-chain integration and disaggregation; (4)
empowerment of employees and teams; (5) knowledge management; and (6) networked
organisation. These six principles converge in organisations under the personalisation of
mass, whether for products or for services (customisation).
Following the literature analysis some consultancy organisations with a clear practitioner orientation made claims about the way they considered Lean Service should be
understood and applied. In this way Allway and Cobertt (2002) indicate that in order to
explore the term Lean Service in organisations in the service sector it is necessary for
Some observations
As has been suggested above, there is a clear theoretical gap when it comes to defining and
profiling the conceptual framework of Lean Service, and despite some authors efforts in
producing empirical case studies (Bowen & Youndahl, 1998) to begin the development of
such a framework, the remainder of the articles continue to adopt a practitioner approach
with little empirical support.
Another key point to be made in these observations is that various writers do in fact
broach the theme of services by writing about service management, including possible
transference of techniques from manufacturing to service organisations, among which
can be found Lean Thinking, or a possible equivalent in the context of Lean Service
(Kumar, Smart, Maddern, & Maull, 2008). However, among all the empirical studies
and research that are presented it seems that organisations cannot manage to distinguish
the exact moment to put into practice all these various techniques that improve the performance of service operations. This confusion is made even worse when certain principles and tools belonging to the various approaches (TQM, Lean approach and
Business Process Reengineering) are interspersed one with the other. Therefore, it is difficult to clearly define what we are talking about when we use the term Lean Service.
Another key aspect that is related to the earlier point is that the literature analysed in
this category agrees on the point that in all service organisations, the most important
element is the people themselves who manage and deliver the service in question. This
point in particular needs theoretical support; there needs to be a detailed and specific theoretical framework of Lean Service in which aspects such as the development of skills and
capabilities of the personnel, the spirit of service, quality of service (customer attention) and even the moment of truth become part and parcel of the service process,
even if this functions as a production line.
3.3 Category 3: specific applications of Lean Service (academic and practitioner
case studies)
Analysing the literature we find that various sectors in services have presented case studies
and research that illustrate success stories about the application of Lean Thinking. These
include both case studies conducted by academics as well as accounts or articles that
reflect the practitioner viewpoint. These we can place into five sub-categories of category
show a positive face and practically none of them indicate or refer to possible inhibitors to
their efforts to improve.
3.4 Category (4): new trends and extensions of Lean Service
First of all, it is difficult to show that there are new trends or possible extensions to a term
like Lean Service when the term itself is so new and under-specified and only now in the
throes of creating a theoretical framework. In fact, as we have observed earlier, there are
very few empirical studies to support it. For this reason, we have placed 28 articles into
Category 4 and classified them into three sub-categories, and by so doing, the authors
will try to find common ground between Lean Service and fields like Service Management
through an analysis of the relevant literature. We are aiming to find a possible theoretical
bridge between these different fields which share, to some extent, certain aspects of Lean
Thinking principles. In the next sections we analyse each sub-category and their possible
linkages.
The first sub-category, 4a, refers to the application of Lean Service in the public
service sector, and so the use of the term Lean can be regarded as an extension of the
generic term because the governmental and civil service sector is so context-specific
and particular. In February 2008 the journal Public Money & Management published
various articles that debated the application of Lean thinking in the public sector; the
majority of the articles agreed that Lean thinking is indeed applicable to public sector management, with certain adjustments (Radnor & Boaden, 2008). Other authors also have discussed the subject showing the possible different cultural and working-environments in
governmental settings for Lean applications (Bhatia & Drew, 2006). In the same vein,
other articles are in the form of case stories which present favourable results in terms of
improvements in the quality of public services, improvements in timeliness of client
response, cost savings and naturally, improvements in citizen client satisfaction
(Suarez-Barraza & Ramis-Pujol, 2008). Finally, recent empirical research studies have
begun to centre on Lean Service as a possible independent theoretical term specifically
applied in the public sector as Lean-Kaizen Public Service (Suarez-Barraza et al.,
2009, p. 163).
The second sub-category, 4b, refers to e-service, and can have certain links to Lean
principles in so far as the work towards the elimination of waste (muda) or any activities
that do not add value to the processes of the service can be improved through the use of IT
(information technology) in a virtual environment which brings along an improved quality
of service as a consequence and the possible positive perception by clients of higher satisfaction. The clearest example of this use of Lean is an article by Voss (2003) in which the
writer re-thinks service in a virtual setting, from the buffer connections (reducing the
contact with the client due to the relationships within the organisation) to the connected
connections in which the client is intimately involved with the service through the information platform (an example is the personalisation of the purchasing process at Dell). In
this sense, providing a service in the virtual dimension requires processes that flow continuously, without obstacles, waste or re-work.
Lastly, the third sub-category 4c Service Excellence, Total Quality Service and
Service Science is at the earliest stages or the setting-up of their respective theoretical frameworks. Referring to Service Excellence both Johnston (2004) as well as Den Hartog and
Verburg (2002) show in their definition of service excellence that at the moment of providing a service it is not enough to satisfy the expectations of the client by keeping a
promise; there have to be mechanisms in the work processes that guarantee that any
errors committed during the delivery of the service can be corrected and prevented. From
this point of view, the principle of perfection from Lean thinking (Womack & Jones,
1996) can be closely tied to the perfection approach of Service Excellence. On the
other hand, in Total Quality Service there are various theories put forward in different
articles by Sureshchandar, Rajendran, and Ananthraman (2001), as well as the theoretical
model presented by Gupta, McDaniel, and Herath (2005) which confirm the need
for working on the management of processes and for a clear focus on the quality of the
service and satisfaction of the client, which links again the perfection principle to
the search to find solutions to problems and to the elimination of muda. However in
none of the articles reviewed do we find a mention of the term Lean explicitly.
4. Conclusions and emerging trends
To bring this article to a conclusion, the following two sections will show a criticaloverview of the points in common that have been found for the term Lean Service in
the literature review as well as pointing to the direction and trends that research into
Lean Service as a new term or concept might follow. As indicated in the first section
we will draw together the points we have identified as common in the use of the term
Lean Service which might limit or set boundaries to its use so as to specify it more
closely. This will be described under three major headings, as follows:
4.1
In accordance with the results of the analysis of the literature review, it is of utmost importance to clarify more exactly the meaning or use of the term Lean Service and in spite of
the efforts of certain writers in this endeavour (Bowen & Youndahl, 1998), the term continues to be ambiguous when it comes to putting it into practice. It is basic for organisations of today to find a series of guiding principles and/or road maps that derive from
an integrated and holistic vision rather than to rely on random ready-made recipes or
check lists. To achieve any lasting impact there is the need for a constant effort to
make improvements on a day-to-day basis in service organisations in order to face the
changes and pressures arising from the external business environment; this effort has a
greater yield from a Lean Service approach which can be applied as a series of principles
that directs the improvement processes and promotes continuous learning. Before this we
need to go much further than the characteristics that were presented through the three case
studies made by Bowen and Youndahl (1998, p. 199) in organisations previously studied
on various occasions. Having said this, in fact there are other service organisations in other
fields that have demonstrated that they can apply Lean principles successfully, and these
might lead to a deeper, clearer and stronger definition of the theory behind the term Lean
Service. Finally, it is worth repeating that the clarification of the concept Lean Service in
future research is not a question of mere semantic abstraction. On the contrary, it is vital
for organisations to understand that what we are talking about is in order to avoid errors,
frustration and disappointment when they come to put Lean principles into practice.
4.2 Applications of Lean Service
There is a wide range of articles in the literature we reviewed on the application of Lean
principles in service organisations in the last eight years, (that is, in this twenty-first
century), above all in the sectors of Health Care and Education. Albeit slowly, now
Possible theme
Current status
Position regarding
theoretical
clarification of Lean
Service
Position regarding
application of Lean
Service
Emerging
Development optimisation and/or
testing of emerging theoretical
models and fundamental features
of Lean Service
Integration of resulting qualitative
models with quantitative studies
to obtain more robust
conclusions
Development and examination of
more studies into service
organisations following the
strategy of case study
methodology using a dual
approach in these organisations
currently apply Lean Service
Compare and validate the
principles, characteristics, tools
and techniques of Lean Thinking
in the health sector to check if
they are Lean Service or some
other peculiar theoretical
dimension exclusive to Health
Care
Develop and examine more case
studies looking for critical
factors, techniques, tools,
enablers and inhibitors key to
application of Lean Service
Explore, analyse and compare the
singularities of Lean Service
application in the private sector
with the application of LeanKaizen Public service
Future studies could analyse the
impact of join applications and
possible links between Lean
service and other approaches a
possible dependent variable
might be Process Management
which might serve as a base to
find the link between Service
Excellence, Total Service
Quality and e-service
Analyse and study the effects of
Lean Service in areas which are
to do with to the direct
relationship between the client
and the organisation (the people
who deliver the service, Moment
of Truth or Quality of Service)
4.3
In the third section and by way of a conclusion, we will present a first attempt to draw
together the common ground and/or characteristics of the term Lean Service that the literature review has revealed. This attempt is in order to begin the orientation of the
debate surrounding the current definition of the term Lean Service on the basis of what
has been written and discussed in the literature so far. It should be said that at no
moment do we try to indicate that the following points of common ground can fully
characterise the theory of Lean Service and each of the proposed points we raise needs,
for obvious reasons, to be followed up by further exploration, research and testing. The
following common points are found in many of the articles reviewed revolving around
Lean Service:
.
Lean Service can be seen as a derivation of Lean thinking, and can be of great use for
organisations in the services sector if it is used as an approach to improvement and
continuous innovation in work processes. In addition, Lean Service can improve the
work (the processes) of service organisations.
Lean Service seeks to reduce waste, culture change to focus on customers and continuous improvement rather than correcting failures.
Lean Service centres on the training of employees who develop behaviours and skills
centred on service to the client, as well as making clients aware of how their organisations in turn can contribute to, collaborate with and participate in the joint creation
of value and assurance of the quality of the service.
Lean Service is a strategic approach that has as its priority and reference the fact that
it places the client at the centre of the service, whether internally or externally.
Lean Service invests significantly in behaviours and methods as well as in organisational mechanisms of involvement and participation of the employees at the team
level and at the individual level. It is done by setting up systems for mutual recognition so as to raise the awareness of the employees to apprehend and apply the
lesson that 90% of service is based on the value equation: client satisfaction
benefit obtained by the client (fulfilling his needs) + the treatment received + solution delivered.
Finally, Lean Service can bring to the service organisation a new sense of discovery,
experience and or re-discovery of the pleasure of service itself; that the delight in
doing business in this sector (serving people) includes minimise waste and maximise
value creations and by doing that improve quality in all aspects of service.
The present analysis and classification of the literature pertaining to Lean Service (the
search for it) continues to be ongoing research and to that end, certain possible trends or
lines of research have been identified that might lead to a better understanding of Lean
Service. It should be noted that the research lines that are presented in Table 3 might be
inadequate if they are analysed through the lenses of other theories or using other date
sources (literature reviews). In addition the authors confirm that the fact that this is a
list of possible themes does not imply that it is possible to satisfactorily cover all the
fields of study that might be opened up as far as Lean Service is concerned.
Note
1. For reasons of clarity and structure, when writing this article we have only included the bibliographical references of pioneering papers in terms of their findings for the field and their date
of publication. If readers wish to consult all the articles we studied academic and practitioner
they are invited to contact the lead author for a more detailed study of the works analysed in the
longer version of this paper.
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