Lean Production in Banks
“An investigation of the extent to which the transferability of lean manufacturing is successful in the UK banking industry and the bench marks it is capable of setting”
Introduction
Toyota were able to enter the US market with their production of cars through the successful implementation and development of lean manufacturing, a startling achievement that has continued to be successful with their rivals GM Motors and Ford struggling to maintain any critical success factors.
Lean Manufacturing has become evident in many manufacturing companies around the world bringing lower production costs and higher quality rates with continuous improvement as its main drive. The UK banking industry has in recent years seen the opportunity to use the skills and theories that lean has to offer and replicate them in a service sector environment. However, lean originated through manufacturing productions at Toyota in the 1940’s and 1950’s, Taichi Ohno later developing on this through the Toyota Production System (Liker, 2003). T this investigation shall interpret the transferability of lean to the UK banking industry, in essence a service sector business, and deduce from its transferability the bench marks it is capable of setting.
How lean is adaptable and how it can be transferable to the banking sector
In its essence the banking sector is a service and thus the transferability of lean to a service can be acknowledged in ‘Lean Six Sigma for Services’. In this text George (2003, p11) explains how ‘almost all the applications of Lean and Six Sigma are for services and transactions’. The thinking behind this involves elimination of waste throughout the whole organization, in its simplicity this does not exclusively apply to manufacturing of products but clearly it can be used in a service environment where non value adding steps to a process for example, can be removed.
The ‘Quality Training Portal’ website explains the attributes of lean that involves eliminating
Introduction
Toyota were able to enter the US market with their production of cars through the successful implementation and development of lean manufacturing, a startling achievement that has continued to be successful with their rivals GM Motors and Ford struggling to maintain any critical success factors.
Lean Manufacturing has become evident in many manufacturing companies around the world bringing lower production costs and higher quality rates with continuous improvement as its main drive. The UK banking industry has in recent years seen the opportunity to use the skills and theories that lean has to offer and replicate them in a service sector environment. However, lean originated through manufacturing productions at Toyota in the 1940’s and 1950’s, Taichi Ohno later developing on this through the Toyota Production System (Liker, 2003). T this investigation shall interpret the transferability of lean to the UK banking industry, in essence a service sector business, and deduce from its transferability the bench marks it is capable of setting.
How lean is adaptable and how it can be transferable to the banking sector
In its essence the banking sector is a service and thus the transferability of lean to a service can be acknowledged in ‘Lean Six Sigma for Services’. In this text George (2003, p11) explains how ‘almost all the applications of Lean and Six Sigma are for services and transactions’. The thinking behind this involves elimination of waste throughout the whole organization, in its simplicity this does not exclusively apply to manufacturing of products but clearly it can be used in a service environment where non value adding steps to a process for example, can be removed.
The ‘Quality Training Portal’ website explains the attributes of lean that involves eliminating
References: Blacklick, OH, USA: McGraw-Hill Companies, The, 2003. p ix. Waddell, B. 2006 http://www.evolvingexcellence.com/blog/2006/05/lean_manufactur.html