The second principle in Lean Consumption (or Lean for Service Operations is1: Customer Value and Don’t Waste the Customer’s Time Obvious at first glance, but what seems obvious to us or common sense is surprisingly not common practice at all. Indeed, a good majority of my posts are actually a look at waiting or queueing. Why? […]
Service Operations Management is Different from Manufacturing. These Articles Explain How and Shows Best Practices You Can Apply Today
Lean Consumption: Solve the Customer Problem Completely
The first principle of Lean Consumption is1: Solve the customer’s problem completely by insuring that all the goods and services work, and work together. The service industry has become a large, complex, and convoluted mix of services that don’t work well together. What companies do, instead, is compensate for the parts not working together through the creation […]
Lean for Service Operations Principles
The principles of Lean Thinking 1 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 […]
Stand in a Circle Exercise, 5 Whys, and a Call Center
Sometime ago while consulting for a huge call center, I took a group of customer service agents for a little Gemba walk and a quick activity to demonstrate a few Lean fundamentals. What was scheduled for a 60 minute exercise turned out to be an experience that awakened the agents, several of whom went on […]
Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos, Part 4
Several weeks ago, Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com, agreed to respond to readers’ questions. Today is the fourth installment to those questions, here are the first, second, and third installments. Be sure to read our other interviews in our leadership series. Also, feel free to jump to other parts of the interview found below: Interview […]
Quasi-Lean at a Call Center
I stumbledupon an interesting article on Lean implemented at a Call Center. Their implementation of Lean is pretty basic, but I think it’s a decent start. In addition to what they did, I would have taken the Lean For Service and Lean Provision approach. Specifically, this is what they implemented: Use visual workplace to expose […]
- « Previous Page
- 1
- …
- 4
- 5
- 6