Building a Lean Service Enterprise: Reflections of a Lean Management Practitioner

1. How Engaged Is Your CEO and Top Management?
2. Spend the First 90 Days to Understand the Needs of the Company
3. Should You Board the Ship?
4. Before Embarking on a Lean Effort, Pause to Understand the Type of Problem That You Are Trying to Solve
5. Just Knowing Tools Does Not Make You a Lean Change Leader
6. Know the Building Blocks
7. Influence": Least Discussed Yet the Most Important Quality of a Seasoned Lean Change Leader
8. Engagement: Where to Begin?
9. To Whom Does the Lean Change Leader Report?
10. Trigger Signs of Upcoming Change by Embedding New "Ways of Working" for the Leadership Team
11. Do You Know What Constitutes a Great Lean Team?
12. A Person Keen to Be Popular Should Not Become Involved in Lean Efforts
13. It Makes Sense to Define Lean Differently
14. How Aligned Is the Top Management on Organizational Outcomes?
15. Do You Know the Building Blocks of a Holistic Lean Transformation?
16. Do Not Forget the 15Cs of Lean Transformation
17. Let Us Not Think of Lean as a Cost-Cutting Endeavor
18. It Helps to Adopt a Quiver Approach in a Lean Transformation
19. Let a Road Map Guide Your Deployment
20. Observe, Observe, and Observe
21. Lean Need Not Necessarily Be Called Lean
22. Service Guarantee Can Be a Good Aspiration to Have in a Lean Transformation Journey
23. Getting Top Management Commitment Is Necessary but Not Sufficient
24. Creating a Sense of Urgency Is a Prerequisite for Successful Lean Deployment
25. Do Not Forget to Include Those Below Top Management
26. Is Lean Applicable in Your Organization?
27. Service Processes Are Quite Different from Those That One Sees in Manufacturing
28. Do People Know Why the Organization Is Embarking on a Lean Journey?
29. Why a Common Understanding of Service Is a Must in Lean for Service
30. Who Are the Custodians of Your Process?
31. Just Not Larger Projects
32. White Spaces: A Great Lean Opportunity
33. Does Your Organization Have a Standard Approach to Solve Problems?
34. Shun Verbosity and Long Presentations: Adopt A3 Thinking
35. What Metrics Should You Have?
36. Is Employee Attrition a Problem in Your Company?
37. Inventory in a Services Organization Can Be of Various Hues
38. The Functional Crevices Provide a Great Lean Opportunity
39. MIS Reports, MIS Reports, and More MIS Reports
40. The Role of the Lean Team Should Change over Time
41. Make Customers Service Themselves
42. Encourage Team Members to Report Problems
43. Processes Should Positively Affect the Key Stakeholder
44. Do Not Forget to Ascertain the Health of Lean Adoption
45. Embed a Regime of Reflection
46. As You Negotiate the Lean Journey, Do Not Forget Those Who Could Derail the Efforts
47. Not Only Visual Tools but Also a Holistic Visual Management System
48. It Helps to Ascertain Effectiveness of Visual Management
49. Ohno's Wastes Are Applicable to Service Organizations
50. Are You Aware of Wastes of Business Acquisition?
51. Be Careful about the Service Recovery Process
52. Multiskilling Is a Good Capacity Optimization Technique
53. Building a Pull System in a Service Enterprise
54. Know the Little-Known Law
55. Use Little's Law to Create Pull in Transaction Processing
56. Do Not Standardize All Processes in a Service Company
57. Make the Process of Cross-Selling More Efficient and Effective
58. Practice Pull-Based Sales
59. Do You Know the DEB-LOREX Model for Lean Transformation?
60. Make a Deep Assessment of Lean Enterprise Using the DEB-LOREX