Can Lean Production Methods Work in Services?

The Toyota Production Method is a Grade A example of how "lean" production methods help big iron and other manufacturers improve quality, production efficiency and worker satisfaction. (Lean doesn't mean reducing fat, but rather working more efficiently.)

Question: Can these same methods that work so well in the manufacturing sector be translated to operations and improvements in service industries, specifically software development?

Pioneering research by Harvard Business School professor David Upton and doctoral student Bradley Staats suggests the answer is yes. Their work, recently updated, looks at how Indian software developer Wipro uses lean methods to deliver projects that perform better and with lower variation, in many, but not all cases.

Among the methods Wipro employed:

• Abolish Hierarchies. Wipro devised a bottom-up organization that allows many people to have a wide-field view of the process to spot problems and identify efficiencies.
• Continuous Improvement. Using "kaizen" resulted in an iterative method of software development rather than the traditional sequential steps using separate workers. This allows more bugs to be flushed out early and knowledge to be shared across the process.
• Lean Tools. Wipro uses tools specific to the software development process based on lean principles such as DSM (design structure matrix), SCE (system complexity estimator), and VSM (value stream mapping), the latter used to pinpoint wasted time and effort.