Lions, tigers, and lean: a safari park joins the process improvement loop.

Industrial Engineer, March, 2008 by Julien, Denyse; Tjahjono, Benny

WHEN LOOKING FOR WAYS TO ELIMINATE repetitive and wasteful activities, lean thinking is viewed as the solution to track costs so as to obtain flexible and adaptive processes. Although the underlying lean philosophy can be transferred to the service industry, differences between service and manufacturing may arbitrate the success rate of changes that are made. For example, in a manufacturing context, the value of a product often relates to the specific functionality of the product, and it is therefore relatively easy to distinguish between value adding and non-value adding activities. In the service sector, however, the customer participates directly in the production of the service. The rapport between staff and customer has a significant impact on the added value...