Lean Consumption: An Introduction

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The principles of Lean Thinking¹ has gone well beyond the factory floor. With the rise of more consumer – provider services, the service industry² is quite ripe and in need of the principles of Lean Thinking.

In an article back in 2005, Womack and Jones expand the principles of Lean Thinking in an article published in the Harvard Business Review (HBR) as “Lean Consumption”.

In this series on Lean Consumption, I’ll lay the groundwork for what Womack and Jones detail in that paper and share a personal, real-world example of a process before the principles of Lean Consumption were applied. Then in subsequent posts, I’ll explain each of the six principles in detail and show how the process and service³ experience is improved through the application of Lean Consumption principles to the benefit⁴ of both customer and service provider.

Principles of Lean Consumption

1. Introduction to Lean Services
2. Lean Services and Solving the Customer’s Problem Completely
3. Don’t Waste the Customer’s Time – in Lean Services
4. Provide Exactly What is Wanted
5. Provide Exactly What is Wanted and Where it’s Wanted
6. Provide What the Customer Wants, When it’s Wanted, and Where it’s Wanted
7. Lean Services and How to Aggregate Solutions
8. Lean Services Summary

In subsequent post in this series, I’ll explain each of the above Lean Consumption Principles in detail.

Lean Consumption: A Case Study

In the United States, it is an annual exercise to register your car or vehicle.  That means taking your vehicle to the department of motor vehicles, showing that the car meets the safety and emissions standards for the state, and paying the annual motor vehicle tax.

I had to do this recently and I recorded the steps. Below is a picture of the steps I took to register my car or motorized vehicle (click on image to see a larger view):

Notice that it took me over 210 minutes to drive, have my oil changed, get safety and emissions test performed, drive to the department of motor vehicles (DMV), show them my papers, pay my annual motor vehicle tax, and get my 2011 stickers to place on my car.

For the two providers – the Car Mechanic and the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) – it took both service providers a total of 45 minutes to serve me.

Practice Over Theory

Okay, Lean Thinker, now consider the following:

1. Which steps for both consumer and service provider would you consider waste?
2. Given the principles of Lean Consumption, what might be done to alleviate the burden on both customer and service provider?

In the next post, I’ll show how one company saw this problem as an opportunity and created a business around it. Indeed, they saw this problem and created an innovation that is now responsible for 9% of revenues, which is significant for a company with revenues over $150 million.

	This post was written by Pete Abilla