Logistics and Supply Chain Management, 6th Edition

Managing the service supply chain

Some years ago one of the UK’s major banks created the post of ‘Manufacturing Director’. Even though the bank did not make any physical products, the thinking was that the ‘back office’ was no different than a factory and that the principles of process management could be applied. The aim was to emulate the Toyota Production System and to employ lean Six Sigma methodologies to reduce variation in process performance.

One of the tools that the bank used to redesign its processes to improve service delivery performance was a form of ‘service blueprinting’.6 The idea behind service blueprinting is to produce a map that highlights the connections between customer actions and what goes on in the front office and ...