A Critical Analysis of the Implementation of Lean Principles in the Service Industry

“Lean is a systematic approach to identifying and eliminating waste (non-value-added activities) through continuous improvement by flowing the **product at the pull of the customer in pursuit of perfection.” Lockwood [24].

This paper presents a relevant contribution for practitioners and managers to deal with the implementation of lean. It shows that through the effective use of available tools to measure the lean manufacturing implementation of the company. Lean methods are available for them to identify specific problems and opportunities to improve the lean practice implementation.

“Lean means creating more value for customers with less” (Krejewski, L., Ritzman, L.P., & Malhotra, M.K., 2013). Implementing this into a project can make the project very successful at a lower rate of cost and time. There are five steps in allowing the lean process to work successfully. This process is easy to remember but not always easy to achieve. Specifying the value from the customer’s point of view of the product that the customer is interested in purchasing is the first step. Identifying all the steps of value for the product the customer wants to purchase and eliminating the steps that are unnecessary is the second step. Creating a sequence of steps that flow in a consistent fashion and will flow smoothly toward the customer is the third step. Introducing the flow of the product that the customer is interested in purchasing and allowing the customer to pull value from the product is the fourth step. The fifth and final step in the lean technique process is “as value is specified, value streams are identified, wasted steps are removed, and flow and pull are introduced, begin the process again and continue it until a state of perfection is reached in which perfect value is created with no waste” (Lean Enterprises Institute, 2015).

Lean is defines the manufacturing philosophy that reduces the time between the shipping and customer demand, which based on the systematic method by eliminating waste, that means giving the customer what they want when they want it, and don 't waste whatever. Rahmana, Sharif and Esa (2013) suggested lean production is mentioned to improve the company 's performance from the philosophy in reducing waste in order. That means, lean system destination is the decrease cost by removing the non-value activities, which they are applying a category of tools and techniques for checking and eliminating defective in the production process. In the Evenort Company should emulate the five overriding principles of lean thinking in terms of implementing lean that there is guarantee the company has been driving correctly in the lean manufacturing (Cardiff 2015) as can show in table 1.

Mr Taichi Ohno first developed the Lean Concepts at Toyota ( Womack, 1998) The principles he developed are applicable both to the manufacturing and the service sectors( A.Lakshminarasimha,2005). To enable a proper perspective on the concepts of Lean, an attempt is made to briefly recapitulate on them.

Lean Construction is inspired from the Toyota Production. Toyota production provided the Transform -Flow –Value(TFV) philosophy of production in 1950’s.(Koskela, 1992).According to this philosophy the production is not only transformation of the inputs to outputs but there exists a flow of resources and information which seeks to generate

Abstract The ‘‘lean’’ approach has been applied more frequently in discrete manufacturing than in the continuous/process sector, mainly because of several perceived barriers in the latter environment that have caused

Lean is about doing more with less and is often used in connection with lean manufacturing to imply a ‘just-intime’ approach to the business. Many companies that have adopted lean manufacturing as a business practice are anything but agile in their supply chain. It is paradoxical that many Japanese companies have exceptionally long delivery lead-times to their customers and insist that those customers provide them with firm orders often several months ahead of manufacture. Yesterday’s world was one characterised by standard products, mass produced for generally predictable market demand. Today’s world is almost the opposite with customers demanding tailored solutions (high variety) in small quantities (low volume) with a higher degree of uncertainty.

Lean Manufacturing is an approach taken by manufacturing organization to increase efficiency through optimization and maximize customer value while minimizing waste. Traditionally, Lean principles were applied to manufacturing industries especially automotive companies. However, with the success in automotive industry, it no longer limited to automotive sector and can be applied in other manufacturing sectors as well as services industries (Balle, et al., 2006). The drivers for implementing Lean in both manufacturing and service sectors are customer demands for better quality products and services, managerial demands for cost reduction and sustaining in an increasing market competitiveness.

Lean is a quality management program that was made popular at the Toyota Corporation. Its main philosophy involves eliminating wasteful or unnecessary steps in the process and creating value for customers. Toyota’s past president identified seven types of waste to be eliminated from the supply chain. They are waste from overproduction, wasting time, transportation waste, inventory waste, processing waste, waste of motion and waste from defects. Organizations that successfully implement Lean methodologies can reap dramatic benefits (Jacobs & Chase,

As usual, every theory implemented has its own limitation. For lean thinking, it can help manufacturing industry to achieve in minimizing the waste activity. However, lean manufacturing has not been accepted by all users. For instance, difficulty in having human coordination and the limitation in applicability outside monotonous manufacturing environments are the weaknesses that

Figure 1 provides a conceptual framework of lean principles across the supply chain of the enterprise thereby yielding value to the customer. Lean thinking helps in providing flexibility to the needs of the customer. Emphasis is also put on organization of workplace which leads to more simplified work environment. Ease of access in the workplace and good ergonomic designs are some of the by-products of lean thinking methodology. Lean enterprises are more adaptable to changing market trends and also provide prompt delivery to products and services. [3]

The main aim of lean manufacturing is to limit inventory, excess workers and waste. The basic principles can be broken down into five practises – value, value stream, flow, pull and perfection [1]. It is essential to map the value that the product provides to the customer. Decisions need to be well thought-out, and implementations should be rapid. It is also important to ensure that each step provides value thus maintaining the value stream. Flow recognises the processes that ensure that the movement between the value creating steps is smooth. Lean manufacturing requires the customer to pull the output from the previous step and hence avoid overproduction. Finally, the vendor needs to continually strive to improve their quality and processes. Lean manufacturing emphasises on continuous improvement in quality and work should be stopped as soon as quality starts suffering.

“In academia, the majority of the operations management literature focuses on the application of lean manufacturing in large discrete organizations (Moreno-Luzon, 1993). [3] Few academic articles even started to raise interests over the straightforward application of lean manufacturing in processing industries (Abdulmalek and Rajgopal, 2007 &; Melton, 2005) [4]. The specific characteristic of goods and/or processes in processing industries offers a great demand to the application of lean manufacturing” (Abdulmalek et al., 2006; Van Donk and Van Dam, 1996) [5].

domestically and internationally. A recent interest in these lean concepts has generated discussion on to