Lean production in service industry: A restaurant application

Lean manufacturing method is used in many fields today and the number of examples is increasing continuously. Lean manufacturing, which was first introduced at the Toyota Motor Plant under the leadership of Taiichi Ohno, is a continuous improvement method aimed at eliminating all waste in production. This method, which is mostly used in manufacturing, was started to be used in the service sector with the effect of computer technology and information age. Food and beverage enterprises contemporarly have a large share in the service sector. These services have reached a significant volume both in terms of economic system and contemporary social life. Therefore, in order to keep up with today's competitive and rapidly developing conditions, customer needs should be met in the best way and the resources of the enterprises should be used in the most effective way. In this respect, the importance of lean manufacturing methods for service businesses is increasing. This study aimed to investigate the application and results of lean manufacturing in a food and beverage business in service sector. Therefore, it was intended to provide a more value oriented flow by using Value Stream Mapping (VSM), which is one of the lean production methods in a food and beverage business. In this respect, first observations were made and current situation map was formed with the obtained data. Then, it was aimed to provide a continuous flow by eliminating bottleneck points on the current situation and avoiding wastes, and a future state map was proposed. Proposed new system and improvements made in accordance with these proposals resulted in a 3,33 % improvement in production throughput time. Uptime of work stations were also increased. While capacity achieved with the process structure at the start of the study was not enough for the short term aimed capacity of the firm, new organization and improvements provided 27 % increase in capacity without any investment costs. Keywords: Lean Manufacturing, Value Stream Mapping, Service, Food and Beverage Services.