Lean Manufacturing in Public Services:Prospects for Value Creation Ayham Jaaron and Chris Backhouse Manufacturing Organisation Research Group The Wolfson School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering Loughborough University, UK Presented at: IESS1.0 , Geneva, Switzerland 17-19 February 2010

1. Lean Manufacturing in Public Services:
Prospects for Value Creation
Ayham Jaaron and Chris Backhouse
Manufacturing Organisation Research Group
The Wolfson School of Mechanical and Manufacturing
Engineering
Loughborough University, UK
Presented at:
IESS1.0 , Geneva, Switzerland
17-19 February 2010

2. List of contents
 Research Background.
 Mechanistic vs. Organic Structures.
 The Concept of “Affective Commitment” (AC).
 Affective commitment significance to manufacturing.
 Creating lean thinking call centre (organic).
 Research Case Study.
 Findings.
 Comparative study.
 Conclusions.
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3. Research Background
 There is an excessive focus on statistics and regulations to satisfy government
targets. This has caused an entrapment to ineffective call centre’s management
and design by focusing on statistics and targets.
 This causes the system to hide many repetitive tasks and procedures that is
considered as waste.
 Due to the current economical pressures, the government expectations from local
authorities included a demonstration for Value For Money for the operations and
services they run, this alarmed managers with the need that substantial cashable
efficiency savings will be required, ideally without impacting upon service
performance.
 This was built upon in local authorities quest for ways to achieve its aim to save
the government’s money, eventually through the application of transformational
reviews of systems and managerial regimes.
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4. Research Background
 A shift has been noticed in public services to utilize lean manufacturing
systems for potential added value.
 Many studies have studied the need for implementing lean
manufacturing in service department, but many have failed to link this
implementation with the effects on employees affective commitment and
its role in creating a high quality service.
 Therefore, this paper aims to investigate the impact of the lean
manufacturing systems on the added value to the public services
departments in terms of employees' affective commitment leveraging.
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5. Research Background
Mechanistic/Traditional Structure:
 Call centres are Mechanistic Structure
(Mass Production) models (Burns and
Stalker, 1961).
 They are represented by close monitoring
of words, stressful working loads,
emotional exhaustion and burnout, and
less empowerment of employees.
 The consequences are: High employee
turnover, lower service quality and
ultimately low customer satisfaction.
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6. Lean Manufacturing virtue:
 Respect for Human abilities and capabilities.
 Employees are given the ability to make work decisions
 Have a sense of freedom and ownership
 Tasks are not governed by rigid rules and procedures
 Team shares the responsibility of the work
 It creates an organically structure department.

7. Mechanistic vs. Organic Structures
 As a result of Mechanistic
structures, employees lack
the AC which is more
effective than Job
Satisfaction in influencing
the service quality.
Mechanistic structures are
inward oriented structures
that must be shielded from
the environment but call
centres are outward-facing
entities (Robey and Sales,
1994).
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8. Mechanistic vs. Organic…..Continued
 This firmly implies that call centres must be given a certain form of
Organic Structure through the implementation of lean manufacturing
(enabler) that will stimulate the Affective Commitment building among
employees and improve work conditions (Jaaron, 2009).
Mechanistic Organic
Structure Call Lean Principles Structure Call
centre centre
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9. The Concept of “Affective Commitment”
 AC is “the employee's emotional
attachment to the organization” the
person strongly identifies with the
goals of the organization and
desires to remain a part of it
because he “wants” to (Meyer and
Allen 1991).
 AC is more effective than job
satisfaction in influencing the
service quality of customer-contact
employees.
 Antecedents: employee’s personal
characteristics, organizational
structure, job-related
characteristics, and work
experiences.
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10. Affective Commitment Significance to manufacturing
Lack of affective commitment causes high levels of turnover. This
has two types of costs:
 Direct costs (i.e. quantifiable): advertising and recruiting cost,
interviewing cost, orientation or training cost, and employment
application processing cost.
 indirect costs (i.e. unquantifiable): reduced quality assurance, increased
sick time and decreased morale. This has invaluable effect on call
centre environment and customer retention (Krenzelok and Dean,
1994).
Affective commitment and Customer retention:
 highly affectively committed employee is more willing to exert more
efforts on behalf of his employer to do exceptional job of delivering a
quality service that retains customers.
 The longer the customer stays with the company, the more the profits
gained would be (Reichheld and Sasser, 1990).
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11. Creating lean thinking call centre (organic)
Stages in the process Stages Definition What does it do?
‘Check’ An analysis of the what and Provides a sound understanding of the system as it is and identifies
why of the current system. potential causes of waste.
‘Check’ asks:
• What is the purpose of this system?
• What is the nature of customer demand?
• How does the work flow?
‘Plan’ Exploration of potential Provides a framework to establish what the purpose of the system
solutions to eliminate waste. should be and how the flow of work can be improved to meet it.
‘Plan’ asks:
• What needs to change to improve performance against purpose?
• What action could be taken and what would be the predicted
consequences?
‘Do’ Implementation of solutions Allows for the testing and gradual introduction of changes whilst
incrementally and by still considering further improvement.
experiment. ‘Do’ is concerned in:
• Developing redesigns with those doing the work.
• Experimenting designs gradually.
• Reviewing changes.
• Working with managers on their new role.
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12. Creating lean thinking…….Continued
Lean Thinking
Adapted from: (Seddon 2003)
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13. Research Case Study
Research Background:
 A case study was conducted at the Information and Communication
Technologies (ICT) department of Stockport Council in England. The
council has a call centre that supports 6000 customers across the council
departments for their IT needs and problem solving.
 The call centre has a total of 18 employees working on phones and
emails.
 The ICT department was a part of a transformation programme followed
lean manufacturing principles and covered all functions of the ICT
department.
 The case study aimed at answering the following research question:
How does lean thinking for call centre service operations affect front-line
employees’ affective commitment ?
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14. Research Case Study.......Continued
Activities of Case Study:
 In depth interviews were used to explore the relationship between
improving the service operations using lean manufacturing and the
affective commitment level of frontline employees.
 Studying employee’s working experience after the project.
 Organizational Commitment Questionnaire (9-items Version) was used
to measure employees’ affective commitment level.
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15. Findings
The In depth interviews analysis revealed the following central
themes:
Theme 1: working experience
Employees enjoy Wider scope of demand, authority to make decisions, share
responsibility of the work, informal communication, no monitoring or scripts were
used.
Theme 2: performance measurement
Evaluation is on the basis of sticking to working principles of meeting customer
demands. They are evaluated on the number of calls that have been met one
stop (value demand).
Theme 3: departmental integration value
Open channels of communication were initiated at managers and departmental
levels. As a result, employees were given quick feedback and support from other
departments when needed to serve a customer.
Theme 4: operational value
Cutting down waste, save resources, 85% of calls are done one stop, focus on
customer service rather than maintaining the system.
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16. Findings
 Results from the Organizational Commitment Questionnaire (OCQ)
provided a net mean of 3.77 out of a maximum score 5, this reflects a
high level of Affective Commitment.
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17. Findings.......Continued
Item No. Minimum Maximum Mean Std. deviation
Q1: I am willing to put great deal of effort beyond that normally
18 3.00 5.00 4.0588 0.8726
expected to this company be successful.
Q2: I talk up this company to my friends as a great organization to work
18 2.00 5.00 3.8125 1.0740
for.
Q3: I would accept almost any type of job assignment in order to keep
18 1.00 4.00 2.9375 1.0289
working for this company.
Q4: I find that my values and this company’s Values are very similar. 18 2.00 5.00 3.8125 1.0178
Q5: I am proud to tell others that I am part of this company. 18 2.00 5.00 3.8750 1.1143
Q6: This company really inspires the best in me in the way of job
18 1.00 4.00 3.6250 1.0416
Performance.
Q7: I am extremely glad I chose this company to work for over others I
18 2.00 5.00 4.0000 1.0226
was considering at the time I joined.
Q8: I really care about the fate of this company. 18 3.00 5.00 4.2500 0.7859
Q9: For me, this is the best of all companies for which to work 18 2.00 5.00 3.5625 1.0431
Overall mean 3.77
Internal Reliability (coefficient α) 0.94
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18. Comparative Study
Organic
call centre
76%
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19. Conclusions
 A correlation between the use of lean thinking
in call centres and the Affective Commitment of
employees has been demonstrated.
 The manufacturing enterprise has achieved a
significant value added (the emphasis was on
one stop calls).
 The main feature of work under such condition
is that the general moral system of the
workplace will control the human resources
behaviour and not the traditional technology
surveillance.
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20. Thank you
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