Pravab

LEAN MANAGEMENT In recent years, lean has become a powerful management philosophy that many of the companies have adopted but only few have actually achieved. This is because lean management is an ever ending journey and most of the companies have diverted their resources somewhere else after achieving lean (Trent, 2008). During his research with companies and cases, Trent found out that almost all the previous work in lean is towards manufacturing firms and the operations within manufacturing and explains that the managers should realize that lean practices goes beyond organizations to supply chain (Trent, 2009). Also researchers such as Sandelands (1994) and Avery (2003) asserted the importance of lean supply strategy outside the manufacturing firms. Lean is defined as ‘the systematic removal of waste by all members of the organization from all areas of the values stream’ where value stream mapping is mapping and analysing the activities in the processes (Womack and Jone...

Although the services provided by an organization are very diverse, they have accounted for the performance of the organization (Kotler and Keller, 2007). There have been an increasing number in organizations that are selling services (Rotfeld, 2001). Since the early 1980’s, various author have recommended different service types based on different criterion (Chowdhary and Prakash, 2007). Kotler and Keller (2007) defined service as ‘any activity or benefit that one party can offer to another which is essentially intangible and does not result in the ownership of anything.’ Edvardsson (1998) suggest service to be viewed from the customer perspective as it is them who determines of the quality of the service provided. Service is very important in today context as it is the key for attracting new customers and retaining of existing ones. Bad service experience forces customers to switch the brand or the service provider in search for the one who provides them with satisfaction (Michel e...