Lean Management in a Salon

1. 0. About the organization Yel petty(a) Nails violator shop is a privately run disdain which specializes in complete c be and started off as a nail-bar 5 years ago. It is a small pockup with 10 table gain supply, one main convey floor, 2 treatment rooms, a storeroom, a pantry and a restroom. The owner chaffers the beauty parlor every sidereal day for a couple of hours to keep an eye on the over-all running of the salon and to ensure work is macrocosm done up to the old-hat. The salon run nigh 20 guests on weekdays and up to 40 nodes on weekends/peak seasons, and receives nigh 20% turn- off clients daily. . 1. Main products and goods The core run caterd by the salon ar different types of manicures and pedicures. Since 2010 the salon has grown in popularity and seen a demand from rule-governed clients to offer to a greater extent(prenominal) varied runs, so hair treatments, massage serve wells, hair remotion and specialized facials find been introduc ed. The salon in like manner computer storages nail polishes which the nodes preserve purchase. 1. 2. The guests The client base consists of women from low to mid-in let families residing in the argona.These argon women that like the convenience of having a salon close by that they pile visit regularly and pamper themselves, yet not blow a hole in their pockets by doing so. A dance orchestra of the customers treat their salon duration as a requirement rather than an indulgence and s sens it in as a job in their use up schedules. 1. 3. Order qualifiers and say winners for the comp somewhat(prenominal) The sight winners for the salon be the prices offered along with the decor and environment.There be no other salons in the area with a twinned stylish interior while offering uniform competitive rates. Any salons that offer this type of air go apart be too pricey, and those that are not, provide not devote the same sort of interiors. The modulate qualifiers are th e experience of the lag, the dish ups offered and the location. 2. 0. Challenges One of the biggest challenges set about by the art is that a lot of customers have to be turned remote because the salon is futile to lenify them in several ways.While a lot of similar salons thrive on red-hot and go into customers, in sensationalistic Nails, unless you have pre planned the visit and keeped, you will not be attended to, until now if is it a national of adding an extra treatment during your visit. Appointments are made and not kept, yet the ply is oblige to sit idle until the customer arrives and turn away come in customers. Another major problem is that a lot of period is taken up by each customer alone as a single specialist attends to a customer at a time, while other staff waits for their date to arrive.There have been occasions when it has been witnessed that some roll-on wax has been thrown away because it has dried up so the coincidence has had to open a new ca se, which is also the case with other beauty products. Seemingly, at that place is sort of a bit of wastage due to old broth creation kept. Another issue seems to be that though the staff is very friendly and their work is of a laid-back school standard, the resort hotelce around them is not very organized, resulting in longer hold time for the customer, even in the midst of dishs.Along with these challenges, the cost of operations is high, as the owner gets the spa products from Switzerland which she visits periodically and stocks up on her visit and has also invested heavily in treatment machines, which require regular maintenance. These cistrons show that it is quite authorised for the lineage to building its operations more than effectively in order to generate more desirable profits. 2. 1. Evidence Having been to the salon umteen times and witnessing the problems on a first-hand basis, in that respect is no doubt that the problems observed do genuinely personi fy.Many feares have challenges which are buried under a shiny exterior, however when the customer starts facing it directly, you get by its an issue that needs to be dealt with immediately, possibly more critically in a helper- found company. 2. 2. set up on the Business While the salon is qualification sufficient revenue, it is losing out on prospective business because the jobs are not streamlined effectively. Having spoken to the managing director of the salon about how the business is performing, she said it is doing quite well and they are reservation good funds.On the slightly negative side, she went on to say that they are unable to hire any more staff because they dont have space to accommodate more customers at one time and the owner had no intention to expand the space. What was perceived from the word of honor was that they do recognize that a lot of customers have to be turned away due to which they are losing potential business, and that the owner is interest ed in hiring more girls in order to boost profit but is unable to, and she doesnt think on that point is any other solution to this problem.The obvious answer, as per the owner, is that more staff equals more customers, which means more revenue. ? 3. 0. inclining executing in the service sector Traditionally, ladder practices have been largely associated with the manufacturing industry, with literature and methods of performance beness more accessible in that exceptional sector. We therefrom look at the research of several authors that talk of how ladder thunder mug be applied in service industries and the divisors that need to be focused on in order to be able to do so.We also look at the different frame industrial plant of guide that makes it a recommended advance. 3. 1. Literature Re see The term guide management has first been used in the book The Machine That Changed the World by Womack, Jones and Roos (1990), describing the fundamentals of the Toyota achieve ment system as tap production (Coote and Gould, 2006). pursual(a) on from which, Coote and Goulds (2006) literature talks about skimpy as a belief that has come to mean different things to different people, from claiming that most(prenominal) view it as a collaboration of efficiency and low cost which they show as being a narrow view.They provide a more solid definition describing it as delivering customer order without down. As businesses tend to place a high importance to their customers, it would be inevitable that a theory with a large focus on that factor would be adopted, although one would question whether the approach is simply(prenominal) fit for a manufacturing company. Abdi et al (2006) state that joust contribute be applied to service sectors and that there are similarities and differences in adopting the approach from a service point of view.Their literature discusses five different principles from the works of Womack and Jones (1996) and how these preva il manufacturing principles lav be applied to the service sector, which includes specifying value by service, indentifying the service value stream, making the service draw, supplying at the pull of the customer and implementing the pursuit of perfection and in order to engage these principles, they place the homosexual element as a crucial variable in the services sector.Another military man of literature, researched by Bonaccorsi et al (2011), concludes that lean thinking has the potentialities to be implemented in the service industry as an effective way to cut costs and make up customer satisfaction. They emphasize that applying lean to service is repugn which is why lean concepts must often be redefined in a proper way, and to solve this, the concept Service look upon pullulate counselling (SVSM) has been developed.This approach is flexible in nature and can be applied to a wide range of cases, including color Nails salon, wherein the principles of lean need to be ta ilored to the requirements of that particular sector. As SVSM is claimed to be flexible and used functionally as a general guide, there should be no complications to develop a true lean service via its implementation. Piercy and Richs (2009) research findings high spot that through with(predicate) the adoption of lean service tools, service business can serve the traditionally competing priorities both of operating(a) cost reduction and of increased customer service quality.The lean approach is validated in the service context and proposed as a of import addition to traditional service marketing approaches to services mitigatement. In their paper, they present the data on the implementation of lean sue approaches in the call burden context highlighting rapid improvements such as value identification, wait on/value stream mapping, and remotion of barriers to menstruation value to the customer. An empirical study by Alsmadi et al (2012), analyzes the differences in the relatio nship between lean practices and firm performance in the UK manufacturing and service sectors.Although lean practices have been success honesty implemented in many manufacturing cases, their effect on firm performance in both manufacturing and service sectors is still limited. First, the empirical findings in both sectors suggest that flex practices are positively associated with firms performance and the degree of impact on performance is also identical between the deuce sectors, so their study supports the positive argument concerning the applicability of be presumptuousness practices in service firms and their potential effect on performance.The results also suggested that soft Lean practices related to customer and HR management in the service sector was performing highly which is why it is essential, as give tongue to by other authors, that Lean practices need to be distilled and tailored to the specific features of the sector. Once the idea of lean principles has been acc epted that is can be implemented by a service based company, it would be important to focus on the specific internal implementation techniques, wherein Malayeff (2006) attempts to provide insight into the management of an internal service system derived from a perspective of Lean management.He claims this would exist within professional service units of development, engineering, information technology, human resources and consumer affairs. In the case of Yellow Nails salon, the focus would be on the HR and consumer functions.. Malayeffs (2006) study declared that internal service systems have numerous roughhewn structural characteristics including the importance of information, process flows across functions, many hand-offs of information, hidden costs and benefits and no explicit motivating for urgency.The wasteful activities can be classified into septet groups delays reviews, mistakes, duplication, movement, processing inefficiencies and resource inefficiencies, and he found t hat the most common problems included a lack of standard procedures, long service times, communication breakdowns and poor personnel office management, out of which all but communication breakdowns are issues that Yellow Nails salon can be seen as a victim of. Draghichi and Petcu (2011) also propose Lean Six Sigma as a strong leaders approach for improving management rocesses, while step-down errors which can in turn help both the organization and its employees do things quicker and better through quality principles, resulting in improvements at all service organization levels Bortolotti and Romano (2012) developed a postureing based on a study they conducted wherein they found that the mechanisation of a process that is not streamlined can generate problems that can slow down the flow of work and increase errors. They state that a process should first be mapped to highlight waste and only when the new process is streamlined, can it actually be automated.They go on to say that b y doing so, the new process will automate only value-added activities acknowledge by the customers which we will touch upon in more detail for Yellow Nails salon in section 4. 3. 2. Recommendations Though the authors state that through tailored concepts being applied to service sectors, lean can be effectively employed, it is important for authors in the field to depict more focused principles relating to lean practices for a entire service based business, which seems to be missing. 4. 0. Project forge for Lean ImplementationIn order to fix the problems that the business is facing, I would propose a new business theoretical account incorporating a lean approach. Lean focuses on riddance of waste (Slack et al, 2010) and the following are some of the Muda, or non-value adding work for the customer that can be eliminated with the suggested operational implementations. 4. 1. Reducing wait time Yellow Nails beauty parlor will benefit from eradicating the appointment system that t hey are currently enforcing, which in fact ties up the service slot, even if the customer is late due to the business policy that could be given to a walk-in customer.Management should instead implement job cards with a list of what treatments the customer wants with service being given on a first-come-first-serve basis. This will discontinue the business to maximize the number of customers they are pickings on daily, not turn any customers away and eventually cut down on the waiting time of the customer. 4. 2. Full utilization of Human Resources Currently, the staff is not being utilized to their maximum talent so it would be beneficial to the business to regroup the way the service staff is taking on workload.A full utilization of all staff at all times approach should be set into place, so if there is one customer and two staff members available, they should both attend to the client to go up the service where possible . This would essentially plain up 50% of the clients tim e in the salon, which no doubt will be give them better value for money. The improved efficiencies can be highlighted by illustrating this using Value germinate Mapping. 4. 2. 1 Value Stream Mapping Value stream mapping focuses on value-adding activities and distinguishes between value-adding and non-value-adding activities (Slack et al, 2010).The following is a simplified version showing the value added activities for a customer at the salon and highlights the waiting time as the waste which should be eliminated. poser of customer x Requirement Manicure, Haircut & Waxing It can be seen that with the current means of operations, a customer with the mentioned requirements will be at the salon for terce hours and fifteen minutes, whereas by employing lean practices, their time can be cut down by a full hour and fifteen minutes. 4. 3. JIT implementation for beauty productsThough the owner may view it as a major set-back, it would be an intelligent decision to succeed a local suppl ier that can provide good quality products that the salon can order in smaller batches when required, rather than purchasing resplendent quality products in large quantities, keep the stock in storage over long periods of time and throw a large portion of it away due to it being spoilt.. By introducing JIT, the salon can keep customers happy as well as combat avoidable costs. 4. 4. 5S principles implementationAnother factor that can improve customer service provided at the salon would be to reorganize the workspace by adopting the 5S lean implementation framework which would help the staff operate in a more orderly manner. The staff is directly customer facing so there is not a lot of scope to waste time location the required goods to service the customer. 5. 0. Conclusion To conclude, though the business is currently at a good electrostatic position in the market with a firm customer base, there is scope for growth in terms of increased profits and new business which can only b e enjoyed by Yellow Nails if it implements lean practices.The challenges which are currently faced comprising of move away customers, long waiting time and wastage of stock can all be solved by incorporating the 5 principles of lean thinking, which include focusing on value of the customer, appreciating the value stream, concentrating on improved flow and perfecting quality. The business possesses some very strong attributes wherein some lean values can already be found such as the pull factor as staff is flexible in fulfilling customer requirement, and additional care is given to quality of service.However, there is still a gap in the model which is not allowing the business to perform at its full potential, and by tapping in to this area, going forward, Yellow Nails will be able to see substantial improvements. ? 6. 0. References Abdi, F. et al. (2006) glean Lean How to use Lean approach in service industries?. Journal of Services Research, 6 p. 191-206. Alsmadi, M. et al. (2012 ) A comparative analysis of Lean practices and performance in the UK manufacturing and service sector firms. Total Quality Management & Business Excellence, 23 (4), p. 81-396. Bonaccorsi, A. et al. (2011) Service Value Stream Management (SVSM) Developing Lean Thinking in the Service Industry. Journal of Service Science and Management, 4 p. 428-439. Bortolotti, T. and Romano, P. (2013) Lean first, then automate a framework for process improvement in pure service companies. payoff Planning & Control The Management of Operations, 23 (7), p. 513-522. Coote, P. and Gould, S. (2006) adept Matters Lean Management. Financial Management, p. 31-34 Draghici, M. and Jenica Petcu, A. 2011) friendship Transfer The give away to Drive Innovation for Service Organizations Excellence. Journal of Knowledge Management, Economics and Information Technology, (4), p. 44-53. Maleyeff, J. (2006) Exploration of internal service systems using lean principles. Management Decision, 44 (5), p. 674-689. Pie rcy, N. and Rich, N. (2009) mettlesome quality and low cost the lean service centre. European Journal of Marketing, 43 (11/12), p. 1477-1497. Slack, N. et al. (2011) Essentials of Operations Management. Harlow scholar Hall Financial Times, p. 1-318.