Abstract
Ever since Levitt’s influential Harvard Business Review article ‘Production-Line Approach to Service’ was published in 1972, it has been common for services to be treated like production lines in both the academic literature and more widely in management practice. The belief that achieving economies of scale will reduce unit costs is a common feature of management decision-making. As technological advancement has produced ever more sophisticated IT and telephony, it has become increasingly easier for firms to standardise and off-shore services. The development of the ‘lean’ literature has only helped to emphasise the same underlying management assumptions: by managing cost and workers’ activity, organisational performance is expected to improve. This chapter argues that through misinterpretation of the core paradigm ‘lean’ has become subsumed into the ‘business as usual’ of conventional service management. As a result, ‘lean’ has become synonymous with ‘process efficiency’ and the opportunity for significant performance improvement – as exemplified by Toyota – has been missed.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
For example: financial services, telecommunications, IT services, police, local authority, government agencies and housing services.
- 2.
The first published use of the term ‘lean production’ was by John Krafcik (1988) a researcher with Womack, Jones and Roos on the International Motor Vehicle Program (IMVP) at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MiT). However, it was Womack, Jones and Roos’ book which brought the term ‘lean’ into widespread use.
- 3.
See http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1289640.ece for the coverage in the Times on January 5th 2007.
- 4.
While Deming was not the first or only ‘guru’ associated with the Japanese miracle, he became the most well-known, following his appearance in the (US) nation-wide airing of a television programme entitled ‘If Japan Can Why Can’t We?’ in 1980.
- 5.
Methodological principles for studying and acting on failure demand are summarised in: ‘Failure demand – from the horse’s mouth’ (Seddon 2009).
- 6.
Yet the extent remains unknown in HMRC. In presentations of their lean tools initiative, HMRC personnel demonstrate no knowledge of failure demand on their system.
- 7.
References
Advice UK 2008 ‘It’s the System, Stupid! Radically Rethinking Advice’ AdviceUK: London (Downloadable from www.adviceuk.org.uk, accessed 7/4/2009)
Ahlstrom, P (2004) ‘Lean service operations: translating lean production principles to service operations’ International Journal of Services Technology and Management, Vol 5, nos 5–6 pp. 545–564
Berger M 2001 ‘The automobile in American history and culture: a reference guide’ Greenwood Publishing: Westport, CT
Bowen, DE. and Youngdahl, WE. 1998. ‘Lean Service: In Defense of a Production-Line Approach’ International Journal of Service Industry Management 9, 3
Bowen, DE, Chase RB, Cummings TG and Associates 1990 ‘Service Management Effectiveness’ Jossey-Bass, San Fransisco, CA
Bowen DE and Jones GR 1986 ‘Transaction Cost Analysis of Service Organization-Customer Exchange’ Academy of Management Review Vol. 11. No. 2
Buffa, E.S. 1976, ‘Operations Management: The Management of Productive Systems’, Wiley, New York, NY
Chase, R.B. 1978, ‘Where does the customer fit in a service operation?’ Harvard Business Review, Vol. 56 No. 4, pp. 137–42
Darlington, J, Francis M and Found, P 2008 ‘Flow Accounting and LEAN Enterprise’ CUIMRC Working Paper Series (see http://www.cuimrc.cf.ac.uk/sites/www.cuimrc.cf.ac.uk/files/WP147%20-%20Flow%20Accounting%20and%20Lean%20Enterprise%20(JD,%20MF%20&%20PF).pdf, accessed 21/05/09)
Deming W E 1982 ‘Out of the Crisis’ MIT Press; Massachusetts
Deming WE 1994 ‘The New Economics: For Industry, Government, Education’ MIT Press: Massachusetts
Grönroos, C 1990 ‘Service Management and Marketing’ Lexington Books, Lexington, MA
Jackson, M, Johnston, N and Seddon, J 2007 ‘Evaluating Systems Thinking in Housing’ Journal of the Operational Research Society no 59, 186–197
Johnson HT 2003 ‘Restoring the Human Side of Economic Enterprise: Can Humanity Survive the Financial Dictatorship of Business?’ Paper delivered at Meijo University 31/05/03
Johnson HT 2008 ‘Lean Management and True Sustainability’ in the Lean Manufacturing Yearbook 2008, Society of Manufacturing Engineers: Michigan
Johnson, R.A., Newell, W.T. and Vergin, R.C. 1972, ‘Operations Management’, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, MA
Johnston, R 1994 ‘Operations: From factory to service management’ International Journal of Service Industry Management Vol 5, No 1
Johnston R 2005 ‘Service Operations Management: Return to Roots’ International Journal of Operations and Production Management, Vol 25 No 12 First published in 1999
Krafcik, J.F. 1988, ‘Triumph of the Lean Production System’, Sloan Management Review, Vol. 30 No. 1, pp. 41–52
Levitt, T. 1972 ‘Production-Line Approach to Service’ Harvard Business Review, September-October
Lovelock C.H. 1984 ‘Service Marketing’ Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ
Lovelock, CH 1988 ‘Managing Services’ Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ
Lockyer, K.G. 1962 ‘Factory Management’, Pitman, London
Mackle, K 2005 ‘Continuous Improvisation: why we are so good at it and how it holds back improvement’ Presentation to South Wales Innovation in Materials Management (SWIMM) (see http://www.swimm.co.uk/events/documents/swimmpresentation170205_000.pdf accessed 21/05/09)
McQuade, D 2008 ‘Leading Lean Action to Transform Housing Services’ in Public Money and Management Vol 28 no 1
Neave H 1990 ‘The Deming Dimension’ SPC Press: Tennessee
Normann, R 1984 ‘Service Management’ Wiley, Chichester
Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM) 2005 ‘A Systematic Approach to Service Improvement Evaluating Systems Thinking in Housing’ ODPM publications: London
Ohno, T 1988 ‘Toyota Production System’ Productivity Press: Portland, Oregon. Translated from Japanese original, first published 1978
Pyke, W 2008 ‘Is performance personal or in the system?’ Management Services, Winter 2008, Vol. 52 Issue 4, pp. 40–47
Radnor Z, Walley P, Stephens A and Bucci G 2006 ‘Evaluation of the lean approach to business management and its use in the public sector’ Scottish Executive, Edinburgh
Schlesinger and Heskett 1991 ‘The Service-Driven Service Company’ Harvard Business Review September-October
Seddon J and Caulkin S 2007 ‘Systems thinking, lean production and action learning’ in Action Learning Research and Practice Vol 4 No.1 April 2007, special issue: ‘Lean Thinking and Action Learning’
Seddon J 2003 ‘Freedom from Command and Control’ Vanguard Press: Buckingham.
Seddon J 2008 ‘Systems Thinking and the Public Sector’ Triarchy; Axminster
Seddon, J 2009 ‘Failure Demand – from the horse’s mouth’ Customer Strategy Issue 1, Vol 2 Winter 2009 pp. 33–34
Spear and Bowen 1999 ‘Decoding the DNA of the Toyota Production System’ Harvard Business Review Sept-Oct
Swank CK 2003 ‘The Lean Service Machine’ Harvard Business Review, October
Taylor: FW 1998 ‘The Principles of Scientific Management’ Dover Publications: New York. First published in 1911
The Times 5/1/2007 ‘Is this banana active?’ http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1289640.ece (accessed 08/01/09)
Tuckman, A., 1994 ‘The Yellow Brick Road: Total Quality Management and the Restructuring of Organizational Culture’ Organization Studies, Vol. 15, No. 5, pp. 727–751
Womack JP, Jones DT, Roos D 1990 ‘The Machine that Changed the World’ New York, Macmillan
Womack JP, Jones DT, Roos D 2007 ‘The Machine that Changed the World (with a new foreword and afterword from the authors)’ Simon and Schuster, London
Womack JP, Jones DT 1996 ‘Lean Thinking’ New York, Simon & Schuster.
Womack JP 2006 November e-newsletter. See http://www.lean.org/Community/Registered/ShowEmail.cfm?JimsEmailId=67 for the newsletter in full (accessed 15/11/07)
Zokaei Z, Elias S, O’Donovan B, Samuel D, Evans B and Goodfellow J 2010 ‘Lean and Systems Thinking in the Public Sector in Wales’ Lean Enterprise Research Centre report for the Wales Audit Office, Cardiff University
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2011 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Seddon, J., O’Donovan, B., Zokaei, K. (2011). Rethinking Lean Service. In: Macintyre, M., Parry, G., Angelis, J. (eds) Service Design and Delivery. Service Science: Research and Innovations in the Service Economy. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-8321-3_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-8321-3_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
Print ISBN: 978-1-4419-8320-6
Online ISBN: 978-1-4419-8321-3
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)