Abstract
Looking at industrialization from the standpoint of unlocking brainpower capacity is an essential issue for SPDM. A recurring obsession in this book is creating value from the brains’ every second. We cannot afford to waste their time on jobs that can be industrialized and, furthermore, bore them rigid. Remember that if brains are not challenged they become bored, and if bored, they are unproductive. Let us banish everything that can be industrialized so that they can truly concentrate on tasks that add value for them and the company. But never, ever forget the Promise and the service’s proposed differential. Industrializing must add value to the Promise and the service, and help to unlock capacity. Let us not twist things and stumble into considerations that ruin the service.
Brainpower’s value added must surface by industrializing everything that can be industrialized including informal solutions to everyday problems. This chapter reviews the classic idea behind industrialization and introduces industrialization as a response to the need to utilize a company’s formal as well as informal knowledge stock.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Notes
- 1.
Short- and medium-term value. They may be developing an idea, a source code or a service improvement whose results are not appreciated immediately, but they are generating value for the business.
- 2.
At least that is my take, and my sample is of approximately 600 managers a year.
- 3.
Just one comment. Levitt spoke of planned systems, which is much broader than standardizing processes.
- 4.
In a book I edited jointly with Prof. Josep Riverola (Muñoz-Seca and Riverola, 2012), my colleagues Philip Moscoso and Alejandro Lago, while speaking about industrializing service, said: “Industrializing services seeks to apply techniques stemming from industrial organization to the services sector. Its most important elements are: displacing activities to a zone out of clients’ sight, applying process standardization methods and utilizing technology as a substitute for personal contact.”
- 5.
I hear nothing but complaints from participants about wholly absurd situations to do with rigid processes, standardization and lack of service response. This is abominable.
- 6.
Social Security costs in Spain are 33% of wage costs for each worker. A real torment for SMEs and entrepreneurs.
- 7.
Term that refers to periodically reviewing the sales forecast in order to adjust forecasts to reality.
- 8.
I ask this in class and the answer is, on average, 50% of their time.
- 9.
As of the next chapter we shall deal with service design and delve into this issue and its operations settings using the SAS.
- 10.
Whatever you do in operations, you cannot lift a finger without first doing this. The repercussions may be dreadful if you do not, as you may be meddling with the most delicate part of the business.
- 11.
History always helps. It provides a context that allows ideas to be understood more thoroughly.
- 12.
A classic reference.
- 13.
Narayana Health offers tertiary treatment centers using areas of specialization, including heart surgery, cardiology, gastroenterology, vascular and endovascular surgery, nephrology, urology, neurology, neuroscience, pediatrics, obstetrics and gynecology, psychiatry, diabetes, endocrinology, surgery and esthetic rehabilitation, solid organ transplants for the kidney and heart, and bone marrow transplants, as well as general medicine. It also has oncology services for most types of cancer, including neurological, brain and neck, breast, cervical, lung and gastrointestinal cancers. In a single day it carries out more than 32 heart transplants at a total cost of $800 each, from admission to discharge.
- 14.
Founder Devi Shetty states: “Japanese companies reinvented the process of making cars. That’s what we’re doing in healthcare. What healthcare needs is process innovation, not product innovation.” For his part, Narayana Group COO Lloyd Nazareth says; “The organization can no longer be people-driven. We need to have written-down procedures, and processes that can then be replicated in every new hospital.”
- 15.
We could write a separate book about Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), sleepless nights and associated soap operas, but this is not the place. If you ever happen to find yourself faced with contracting an ERP, read closely the part of this book that deals with innovation and how its different types must be understood.
- 16.
And in Japan they even have robots checking in hotel guests!
- 17.
The system allows users to set up several collections, make notes on items in their collections, and share them by email or on social networks like Facebook and Twitter.
- 18.
A third Harvard Business School (HBS) colleague must be mentioned – Sasser – who worked jointly with them.
- 19.
At least it seems that way to me, which is why I do so.
- 20.
We shall talk about this in the next chapter.
- 21.
Or let them do so, although not by starting from scratch, but rather from previous experience.
- 22.
In other words adding my modest contribution to this whole issue of industrializing service.
- 23.
Remember Chapter 7, two situations swap places in problem-solving: searching for (or exploring), and applying knowledge, or the applicable process.
- 24.
Hence the section heading “Not reinventing the wheel” every day. If we have already solved it, let us use this knowledge.
- 25.
I admit it is a little erudite, but this is the correct way to say it.
- 26.
This proposal to industrialize combines concepts that, at the time of writing, I have not seen set forth in the literature. According to my research, it does not seem that anybody is weighing up this consideration, either in academia or in the business world.
- 27.
Remember what we have already said in this book. The problem-solving process is the mainstay of service companies. The random nature of demand and the client’s active role in developing the service (Muñoz-Seca, 2014) makes it essential for servers to be capable of solving every type of problem, old as well as new, simple or complex.
- 28.
Remember? VOC from Chapter 6 on how to index knowledge.
- 29.
But in a more efficient and productive way here. Although I would never take away coffee machines; they are an important center for seeking knowledge.
- 30.
Personally I love them. I really do not know why, but they are attractive and it is nice to jot things down.
- 31.
Or, if you follow the Moleskin approach, they are posted once a week.
- 32.
Remember, a module is a grouping of activities that makes up a piece of the service.
- 33.
When I ask in class, the estimate is between 30 and 50% of each agent’s time.
Bibliography
Baldwin, C.Y. and Clark, K.B. (2000). Design Rules: the Power of Modularity, MIT Press.
Böttcher, M. and Klinger, S. (2011). “Providing a Method for composing modular B2B services”, Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing, 26,(5), pp. 320–331.
Meuter et al. (2005). “Choosing among Alternative Service Delivery Modes: An Investigation of Customer Trial of Self-Service Technologies”. Journal of Marketing, April, 69,(2), pp. 61–83.
Muñoz-Seca, B. (2014). A Model for Configuring Operations in Service Companies, PN–495 E, IESE.
Muñoz-Seca, B. (2015). Industrializing Service to Free Up Workforce Brain Power, PN–501 E, IESE.
Heskett, J. L., Sasser, W. E. and Schlesinger, L.A. (1997). The Service Profit Chain, The Free Press.
Tuunanen et al. (2007). “Typology or Modular Service Design: Review of Literature”, International Journal of Service Science, Management, Engineering, and Technology, 3(3), pp. 99–112.
Muñoz-Seca, B. and Riverola, J. (2000). Casos Iberoamericanos de innovación y operaciones, Colección Innovación Práctica, COTEC.
Levitt, T. (1976). The Industrialization of Service. Harvard Business Review. Sept.-Oct, 54(5), pp. 63–74.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Muñoz-Seca, B. (2017). Service Industrialization to Unlock Brainpower Capacity. In: How to Make Things Happen. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-54786-2_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-54786-2_8
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-54785-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-54786-2
eBook Packages: Business and ManagementBusiness and Management (R0)