A short review of lean service / Azyyati Anuar, Daing Maruak Sadek and Wan Nor Faaizah Wan Omar

The concept of lean has been expanded to the various organization sectors which is not restricted in manufacturing sector but can be applied in any organization (Emiliani 2006; Gupta and Sharma 2018) including service sector (Krishnan & Parveen, 2013). The aims of manufacturing and service sector are to improve their operations (Cavdur, Yagmahan, Oguzcan, Arslan, & Sahan, 2019) by eliminating non-value added activities (Gupta and Sharma 2018). Allway and Corbett (2002) has stated that service companies need to deliver a good quality service by confronting economic, market and regulatory challenges in order to meet customers’ expectations. Besides, the implementation of lean services is to meet the customers’ requirements in a profitable way (Petrusch & Vaccaro, 2019). Therefore, Bowen and Youngdahl (1998) introduced lean service in their pioneering article entitled; lean’ service in defense of a production-line approach. They have also underlined the characteristics of lean service; reduction of performance tradeoffs, flow production and JIT pull, value chain orientation, increased customer focus and training and employee empowerment (Bowen & Youngdahl, 1998).