Sociological issues of Lean Management (LM) applied to the Service Industries (SI)
.This tab is dedicated to the impacts of LM when it is used as a governing tool in the Service Industries (SI).
Lean Management for IT Services & Engineering
Summary
LM4SI Raw Materials
LM4SI Intrusivity
Is Lean clean?
Does Lean leads to spleen
Lean Management and Social Networking
The social and technical contexts have been completely modified since the beginning of the 80s when this methodology was applied in the Automotive Industries: Read article.
LM4SI Raw Materials
When applied in the Manufacturing Industries, the LM Manager has got many possibilities to cut costs, lower waste, increase efficiency of repetitive manual practices, just by optimizing raw materials provisioning, floor stocks accumulation, and unwanted dead time between processes. Click here for a discussion on LM4SI Raw Materials.
LM4SI Intrusivity
In the Service Industries, the Production Tools are definitely the men and women working for the same Business. They are whether employees or employers. Often, a Service Enterprise is a system consisting exclusively of human beings. Even when machinery is needed, it is secondary because Human Factors are inherent to the notion of good (or bad) "services"; so they must be the primary organizational issues.
The use of LM to an Activity of Service implies that the process optimization will sooner or later affect the individual acts and thoughts of each person who belongs to the organization. As a consequence, managerial orders and requests may deeply interfere with personal convictions and conscience. For example, the reduction of Human Values to the mere quality of being always more performant is excluding all other forms of professional recognition within the enterprise. However, in no way, it could discard other kind of social achievement! If one doesn't share the target of an everlasting self-performance improvement, should he or she continue to work in the same job? If the person keep his job, how could he or she define the limit between his professional and personal objectives?
Moreover, LM promotes proximity coaching. On the one hand, it should reinforce relationship within the team. But, on the other hand, it could allow unwanted intrusion in people's private or even intimate spheres. But if it happens, the management has probably overpassed the frontiers of either the private or the intimate sphere of the person!
It is why Change Management must be conducted concurrently with LM and Collaborative Ethics must be the basic foundations LM.
Managerial inferences on professional relations and on defining or deciding for the Best Practices are obviously acceptable - although LM rationale promotes a collaborative approach with the Team Members' active participation. They must not be a justification for a Lean Intruder to taint and destabilize the global relational situation within the organ