Lean Philosophy In The Service Sector

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Introduction Service sector has not enjoyed the benefits of Lean philosophy as much as the manufacturing sector. The inherent nature of the sector is the reason. The Lean and Six Sigma consultants acknowledge the fact that up to 30-70% of the cost in a service business are frittered away. However, Businesses in both manufacturing and service sectors are paying attention on improving business processes, eliminating waste and reducing costs through three different tools in the form of ERP, Lean and Six Sigma (Anil, Rashmi and Aman, 2014). In Indian IT service industry, large multinational organisations tend to care less for the waste in their operations for a simple reason that their revenue is humongous. But small to medium scale IT industries…show more content…
The Andon system makes this calling easy for the members (Liker and Hoseus, 2008). The Japanese term Genchi Genbutsu is one of the key principles of the TPS and means “going to see”. According to Lean thinking, problems are visible, which makes it sensible to consider Genchi Genbutsu as a key approach in problem solving. It allows management and other observers to see the performance in the manufacturing place where real value is created. Genchi Genbutsu facilitates seeing, for example, whether people are following a repeatable standard process or the material is flowing smoothly through the plant (Liker and Hoseus, 2008). Hansei is a fundamental part of Japanese culture and means self-reflection. The aim is to acknowledge one’s own mistakes and to commit to making improvements. The idea is to review what went wrong and what can be improved. In TPS, only “no problem” is a problem during a Hansei-kai and the focus is on all the deficiencies of both the team and technical processes (Liker and Hoseus,…show more content…
This customer or unit rather “pulls” the product needed. Such a policy prevents overproduction: if the customer or unit “pulls” only those products really needed, the producing unit only wastes its time and resources if it produces unnecessary products. Furthermore, when products are ready just in time, inventories become useless since the customer “pulls” the product to himself before the non- value adding inventorying operation (Shingo, 1989). Womack and Jones (2003, 349) defines the term Just-In-Time follows: “A system for producing and delivering the right items at the right time in the right

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