In service or transactional services, the yardstick for competitiveness is price, quality and customer's delivery fulfillment. Lean improving the speed of customer fulfillment and reducing process wastes along the supply chain while Six Sigma improving the consistency of service delivery performance and quality. Altogether both tools bring down the cost of service and in the meantime delight the customers and maintain long-term loyalty.

 Transactional Is A Process

Service organizations have historically been slow to adopt improvement methods that begin in manufacturing. There is a question many managers are asking the Lean and Six Sigma methods' applicability and effectiveness?

"Service operations are different with manufacturing in which lean and six sigma tools have been applied extensively, and how these Lean and Six Sigma methodologies can solve our "unique" environment ?"

The answer to above question is that no different between service and manufacturing operations, both are boil down to a series of process steps to convert inputs into outputs. Only "it does not apply to us" mindset hinders the buy-in of no different between service and manufacturing. Literally speaking, manufacturing companies are also "service" oriented businesses towards its internal and external customers.

 What Lean Six Sigma (Transactional) Can do for Service Organizations?

Below are quality issue related findings from a survey on financial service executives,

• A lack of consistency in process and procedures
• Low levels of customer satisfaction
• Organizational roadblocks to quality
• A growing gap between marketing and operations