Process Thinking in Services

Lean Services, Lean Marketing and, as a result, Lean Service Design have been a large part of my efforts. When you get involved in a marketing effort, many people and organizations that are making the request have a failed service problem. It is seldom about getting more leads it is more often than not, managing the Leads they have. In today’s world, sales and marketing are very much about the performance of existing services.

Debashis “Deb” Sarkar has been researching, experimenting and working on how to successfully implement the Lean principles to service companies. Deb is also credited to have pioneered the enterprise-wide deployment of lean to service businesses in Asia in early 2000s. Last year, I did a podcast, Process Thinking in Lean Services with Deb and never published a transcription. This is a belated transcription of the podcast.

Deb has led large number of Lean service transformations and his efforts have led to the pioneering contribution to service lean comprising of The DEB-LOREX™ model, a holistic approach for service lean implementation and a blueprint for 5S implementation in service companies. His work is encapsulated in books such as: Lean for Service Organizations and Offices: A Holistic Approach for Achieving Operational Excellence and Improvements and 5S for Service Organizations and Offices: A Lean Look at Improvements.

Deb sits on the global advisory board of Process Excellence Network and has held leadership positions in companies such as Unilever, Coca Cola and ICICI Bank. He currently holds the position of Senior Vice President – Organizational Excellence, Change and Finance Transformation at Standard Chartered Bank Scope International..