Title: A lean management implementation method in service operations

Authors: Lluis Cuatrecasas

Addresses: Departamento de Organizacion de Empresas, Escuela Tecnica Superior de Ingenieria Informatica y de Telecomunicaciones (ETSEIT), Jordi Girona, 1-3, Campus Nord, 08034 Barcelona, Spain

Abstract: The philosophy of lean production had made it possible to reach very high levels of efficiency to many of the magnitudes concerning production systems, in both industry and services. In this paper, we describe a step-by-step methodology to evolve from a classical model of behaviour of a production system to a lean production one; this methodology is quite flexible and may cover a very wide spectrum of production systems. As service companies are frequently among those which would benefit from such evolution, the methodology described here will be applied to a case in the service sector (the check-out service of a hotel type establishment). The methodology also includes a system for calculating the main magnitudes concerning the operations efficiency and its optimisation, step-by-step.

Keywords: lean production; waste elimination; O-T diagram; flow production; takt time; cycle time reduction; check-out service; flexible cells; stock; queue; lean management; lean services; service operations.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSTM.2004.006283

International Journal of Services Technology and Management, 2004 Vol.5 No.5/6, pp.532 - 544

Published online: 13 Feb 2005 *

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