Title: IT support service: identification and categorisation of wastes

Authors: Goutam Kumar Kundu, B. Murali Manohar, Jayachandra Bairi

Addresses: VIT Business School, VIT University, Vellore-632014, India. ' VIT Business School, VIT University, Vellore-632014, India. ' SAIC-India, The Millenia, Tower-C, Level 2 and 3, No. 1 and 2 Murphy Road, Ulsoor, Bangalore-560008, India

Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to provide an insight into the various types of wastes in IT service system from the perspective of lean management. A study of 12 IT support service lines was carried out with an objective to identify and categorise waste/non-value added activities in IT services. The waste activities have been classified into 13 groups: defects, re-invention, unnecessary motion, waiting, over processing, inventory, resource inefficiencies, hand-offs, external quality enforcement, processing inefficiencies, lack of system discipline, ineffective communication and recurring incident. It is quite possible that some of the identified wastes may have inter-relationship or dependency within them. However, such relationship among the wastes was not covered in this study. The paper presents a methodology for identification and classification of wastes in IT support service system. This categorisation would be useful while applying lean principles to IT support service systems.

Keywords: IT support services; information technology; lean management; waste; non-value added.

DOI: 10.1504/IJVCM.2011.041168

International Journal of Value Chain Management, 2011 Vol.5 No.1, pp.68 - 91

Published online: 26 Mar 2015 *

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