Waste types in people processing services

Abstract

The globalization needs and the increased competition between all types of companies put an increased focus on service improvement. Services are mostly customized, intangible, knowledge-based, and one type of services, called here as People Processing Services (PPS), can have the direct participation of customers both as object being processed and as a co-producer. These characteristics of PPS make it difficult to standardize processes, which contribute for generating non-value added activities, classified as wastes in the Lean Thinking knowledge area. This work aims to contribute to the waste classification, proposing a clarification for the types of waste associated with People Processing Services, and further applying this classification to a particular PPS case, the Hip Surgery Production Process of a Portuguese Public Hospital. It was observed that a large number of activities do not add value to the service and waiting is the most common waste.