Roadmap for continuous quality improvement and sustainability: a case study in Egyptian service sector organisation

The introduction of Lean as a business improvement initiative has led to focusing on processes that create customer value; identifying and keeping track of critical value adding activities or processes. Nevertheless, understanding customers' needs and translating customers' value to employees' desire and target is the basis for this paper. A roadmap to implement and sustain improvement programs with application to simple streamlined processes in Egyptian service organisations is suggested. Since Lean thinking provides a way to eliminate waste, improvement results will be immediately reflected in productivity improvement, market share growth, customer retention, cycle-time reduction, errors' reduction, culture change, product/service development and cost reduction. This case study discusses the Egyptian service organisation approach to implement Lean concepts, explain the critical factors involved in implementation and the benefits that occurred.