TY  - JOUR
AB  - The desirability of transferring manufacturing logic and practices to service operations, strongly advocated by Levitt (1972; 1976) in two classic Harvard Business Review articles two decades ago, is now commonly challenged by both service researchers and practitioners. We defend a “production‐line approach to service” by arguing that services can “reindustrialize” by applying revised, progressive manufacturing technologies. We describe how services businesses such as Taco Bell, Southwest Airlines, and Shouldice Hospital have mastered what we call “lean” service ‐ the application of lean manufacturing principles to their own service operations. Overall, services tend to be innovation laggards, compared to manufacturing. Looking ahead, mass customization can be viewed as the convergence of service and manufacturing logic.
VL  - 9
IS  - 3
SN  - 0956-4233
DO  - 10.1108/09564239810223510
UR  - https://doi.org/10.1108/09564239810223510
AU  - Bowen David E.
AU  - Youngdahl William E.
PY  - 1998
Y1  - 1998/01/01
TI  - “Lean” service: in defense of a production‐line approach
T2  - International Journal of Service Industry Management
PB  - MCB UP Ltd
SP  - 207
EP  - 225
Y2  - 2024/04/25
ER  -