BEYOND CLASSROOM BOUNDARIES: HOW HIGHER EDUCATION

INSTITUTIONS APPLY LEAN

Ingrid P. M. Barroso; Sandra M. F. Santos; Maria A. Carravilla

FEUP - Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto

ABSTRACT

Reducing waste is nowadays more and more part of the routine of the Industry and Service
companies. Something that started on production lines, quickly reached the Service sector. In
Womack et al (1990), Lean is defined as “a dynamic process of change driven by a systematic
set of principles and best practices aimed at continuous improvement”. Having its origins in
the Toyota Production System, Lean is applied today in all productive sectors and also in
Services. In Services, the implementation of Lean has been slower, beginning with health
care, followed by financial Services and governmental agencies. The focus of this paper is on
the application of Lean principles in Higher Education Institutions (HEI). As other
organizations in the Service sector, to guarantee their survival, HEI must be Lean, i.e., they
must be better, faster, and cheaper than their competitors. In HEI, besides being taught in the
classrooms, Lean must be spread throughout the organizations.

Keywords: Lean Services; Services; Higher Education Institutions

1 INTRODUCTION

In 1908, Henry Ford started one of the considered “biggest” revolutions ever seen in Industry,
since then known as Mass Production. According to Womack et al (1990), the key for the
Mass Production success consisted in the complete interchangeability of the parts and on the
simple way to adjust them in between.
In 1950, the visit of Eigi Toyoda to the United States was the trigger to the adaptation of the
Mass Production System to Japan, the Toyota Production System (TPS). The TPS, later called
Lean Production, is based on the reduction of waste through the transfer of responsibilities to
the workers, and through standardized work and continuous improvement.
With the increasing maturity of Industry, mainly in developed countries, Services began to
gain higher importance, leading to Industries with more or less Service components, Levitt
(1972). The concept of Lean in manufacturing was therefore subsequently adapted to Lean in
Services. The initial implementations of Lean in Services have been done on the health sector,
and there are also some reported cases based on financial and government agencies, (Wei
2009). Later on, the transport sector began to adapt some of these tools. It was just in the last
decade that something has been done in the education sector, particularly in the
implementation in Higher Education Institutions, the main focus of this work.
The methodology behind this paper was based on a literature review on the evolution of the
Lean concept and its application to Services, with the focus on Higher Education Institutions
(HEIs).
A review of the production systems from Craft Production to Mass Production and the
evolution to Lean Production is presented in section 2. In section 3 the gradual growth of
Service Industry is analyzed from the point of view of the implementation of Lean. Section 4
is dedicated to the Lean implementation in HEI’s, considering the best practices applied,
different kinds of waste and documented processes. Section 4 ends with the comparison of
some processes that have been improved by Lean within key areas of a HEI. In the last
section some final conclusions are driven from the analysis done in the previous section.

2 FROM MASS PRODUCTION TO LEAN PRODUCTION

The deep technological changes brought in by the Industrial Revolution had great impact in
the production process. The craft production has specific characteristics that suffered main
changes throughout the years. During this era the value was aggregated through the artisanal
ability, and companies gave total attention to the final consumer. The production costs were
very high and did not get smaller with a bigger production volume, (Womack, Jones, and
Roos 1990).
In 1908, Henry Ford started one of the considered “biggest” revolutions ever seen in Industry,
since then known as Mass Production. Ford implemented new techniques that allowed
Industry to overcome the craft production problems. These new techniques cut costs
drastically and enhanced simultaneously product quality. According to Womack et al (1990),
opposing to the general believe, the key for the Mass Production success did not lie on the

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movement of the assembly line. It consisted in the complete and consistent interchangeability
of the parts and on the simplicity to adjust them in between.
The Toyoda family made the first visit to the Ford factory in the United States in 1929, but
only in 1950, with the visit of Eigi Toyoda, the Mass Production system had its first
opportunity of being replicated and improved. However just copying the same system to the
Toyota factory in Japan would not be possible. Some of the barriers to make it happen would
be the limited domestic market, the country economy after war, the work force and the
working laws imposed by the USA and the competition among other worldwide
manufacturers that would like to establish themselves in Japan. Meanwhile the Japanese
government took some decisions that made it possible for Taiichi Ohno, head engineer of
Toyota, to put his plan for the Toyota factory into action. These were the first steps for a
concept that would be called the Toyota Production System (TPS).
The TPS was not a copy of Ford´s Mass Production System, but it was based on it with some
corrections and improvements. According to Pasa (2004) there are four principles that ruled
TPS:
 production should be planned around lead time to support demand at the right
moments, using the Just-In-Time concept;
 stocks should be continuously reduced;
 labor work force should be continuously reduced;
 production planning and controlling, information, people, and equipments should be
under systematic and rigorous control, once the resources were planned to work near
the limits.
The basis for TPS is on waste reduction through the assignment of responsibility to the
workers, through standardized work and through continuous improvement. The name Lean
Production did arise later on and he word Lean was suggested because of the best
performance of the Japanese Industry, where the resources are scarcer than in the East.
According to Comm and Mathaisel (2003) Lean is defined as “a dynamic process of change
driven by a systematic set of principles and best practices aimed at continuous improvement”
The main target of Lean is the complete eradication of waste to accomplish competitive
advantage.
Womack et al (1990) refer that the Lean concept can be extended to all kinds of industries,
and they claim that a Lean factory has two main organizational characteristics:

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  The maximum number of tasks and responsibilities are transferred to those workers
actually adding value to the car at the assembly line.
 It has in place a system for detecting defects that, once discovered, quickly traces
every problem to its ultimate cause. Besides the fact that Lean studies were first done
in the Automotive Industry.

3 SERVICE INDUSTRIES AND LEAN

Ever since Industry starts to reach high maturity levels, Services begin to gain higher
importance in the economic growth of developed countries. Levitt (1972) was one of the first
ones to claim that there was no such thing as a Services Industry totally apart from the
Manufacturing Industry, arguing that there are only Industries with more or less Service
components. Following these considerations, several authors consider that it is a challenge to
distinguish the narrow frontier between Products and Services.
According to Kotler (2000), the present economy of developed countries consists of a mix of
seventy percent of Services and thirty percent of Products. The author stated that the service
execution may or may not be linked to a physical product and identified the existence of five
categories of Product offers based on to the Service level on the total offer:
 Pure tangible good – there are no Services linked to the product;
 Tangible goods with a linked Service;
 Hybrid;
 Major Service linked to minor goods & services;
 Pure Services.
Services are defined in diverse ways in literature. Kotler (2000) states that Services cannot be
inventoried, are intangible and at most times are produced and consumed simultaneously. Wei
(2009) listed five distinct attributes for Services operations: intangibility, heterogeneity
(uniqueness), simultaneously (of production and consumption), perishability (of service
provider´s capacity), and customer participation.
According to Senff et al. (2006), the main purpose of Lean is to make a company become
more competitive by reducing waste, i.e. eradicating the tasks that add no value from
productive, business and support processes. The term Lean Production is used to identify
methods and waste reduction on productive systems. When transferred to the Service sector,
these methods can be described as Lean Service. According to Nascimento and Francischini

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(2004), “Lean Service can be defined as a standardized operations service system, constituted
only by client adding value tasks, focusing on explicit intangibles and looking for
accomplishing expectations of quality and price”. Fortes (2010), states that the Lean Service
implementation is based on Lean principles, with some changes for Service organizations.
Womack (2008) stated that “To progress toward Lean Management every organization must
find better ways to address: Purpose, Process and People. Defining the purpose and specifying
the process for achieving the purpose by aligning the people touching the process is the
central task of Lean Management”.
The Lean Service philosophy is still considered to be an emergent area either in applications
and consequently in literature. The initial publications about the implementations have been
done on the health sector. There are also some cases based on financial and government
agencies, (Wei 2009). More recently the Lean concept has been applied in the transportation
sector, whereas the applications in the education sector have emerged only in the last decade,
in particular the implementation of Lean in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs), (Hines and
Lethbridge 2008).

4 LEAN IN HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS

Comm and Mathaisel (2005) stated that “Historically, the purpose of the higher education
sector has been to teach and to conduct research, and for centuries this has held true. Higher
education is also one of the most immutable of institutions”. More recently the context in
which HEI’s are working is changing quite rapidly and, according to Comm and Mathaisel
(2003), the most important factors for change are: higher public expectations over what
universities should be delivering; increasing parental concern about the quality of education;
greater emphasis on college ratings; demographic changes in student population and higher
costs. To these five factors we add the reduction of public funding.
HEIs are agents responsible for knowledge creation and dissemination, and are responsible for
preparing their students to be active members of society, experts and future leaders. The need
of preparation and the exigency of the degrees are even more crucial in a constantly changing
world where personal and collective competences and know-how are tested daily.
The parents and the society in general expect more and more of the HEIs, and on the other
side, the constant budget cuts make a big pressure, exposing their need to reformulate the
organizations and to manage the resources to respond to the external demand. These changes

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make HEIs strive to the implementation of the Lean Service concept and to internalize a
cultural change in order to stay competitive and attractive in business.

4.1 Best practices of Lean applied to HEIs

According to Comm and Mathaisel (2003) the best practices of Lean, established by
Nightingale (1999), that are being applied by some HEIs include:
 Optimizing the flow of products and services, either affecting or within the process,
from concept design through point of use;
 Providing processes and technologies for seamless transfer of, and access to, pertinent
data and information;
 Optimizing the capability and utilization of people;
 Implementing integrated product and process development teams;
 Developing relationships built on mutual trust and commitment;
 Continuously focusing on the customer;
 Promoting lean thinking at all levels;
 Continuously processing improvements;
 Maximizing stability in a changing environment.
For a successful implementation of the Lean concept on HEIs, there are seven important best
practice components that must be followed. These are:
(1) Environment for change
(2) Leadership
(3) Culture
(4) Employee empowerment
(5) Training
(6) Communication
(7) Measurement
The Lean concept, once implemented correctly, results on the elimination of waste, making
processes more efficient and providing better value to the customer of the HEIs.

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4.2 What is considered to be waste in HEIs

According to Jens Jorn Dahlgaard (2000), in the context of higher education there exist 8
types of waste:
 Uncoordinated teaching, coaching and testing, with the consequence that students do
not pass exams;
 Graduate students, who do not have the ability to get a job and do not have lifelong
learning capabilities;
 Scheduling courses for which the students have not yet got the appropriate
qualifications to pass;
 Courses that do not contribute to the customer value concepts;
 Bad planning and mistakes in teaching, coaching and testing so that students, teachers
and the supportive staff have to move from one place to another or from time to
another without any purpose, or have to ‘repair’ damage and mistakes they are not
responsible for;
 Bad planning so that materials and facilities needed for teaching, coaching and testing
are not appropriate in terms of time, cost and quality;
 Teachers and students in downstream activities are waiting because upstream activities
at the supportive staff level have not been delivered in time and visa versa;
 Design of courses and supportive activities, which do not meet the needs of the
customers inside and outside the higher educational institution;
Lareau (2003) stated that there are four general categories of waste, those are:
 People waste – Refers to the category of waste that occurs when universities fail to
capitalize fully on the knowledge skills and abilities of employers and workgroups;
 Process waste – Refers to the cluster of wastes that occur due to shortcomings in the
design or implementation of university processes;
 Information waste – Refers to the category of waste that occurs when the information
that is available is deficient for supporting university the processes;
 Asset waste – Refers to the cluster of waste that occurs when the university does not
use its resources (human facility and materials) in the most effective manner.

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4.3 The processes within HEIs

Harrington (1991) states that “There is no Product or Service without a process, the same way
there is no process without a Product or Service”. According to Davenport (1994) a process is
a structured and calculated sequence of activities, designed to produce a specific output based
on a defined input. HEIs, because of their nature and complexity, have a vast amount of
processes that are created based on the mission, vision and on the specific objectives of each
institution. As mentioned in Cardoso et al., (2005), the core processes of a HEI are:
 Teaching process, related with the application of knowledge;
 Research process, associated with creation of new knowledge;
 Sharing process, that is the dynamic process between the other two processes.
These core processes of a HEI can be organized, according to Madeira (2007) as the
following key areas:
 Students along their academic trajectory;
 Programmes;
 Research.
 Technology transfer;
 Financial resources;
 Human resources;
 Physical resources.

4.4 Some cases of the application of Lean to HEIs

The cases of application of Lean in seven universities in the USA described in Balzer (2010)
and Moore et al. (2004) were organized in Table 1 in the key areas of a HEI according to
Madeira (2007).
It is evident from the analysis that most of the Lean approaches done this far on HEIs is
centered on administrative processes, the ones that HEIs share with the other organizations,
leaving apart the core and most challenging processes such as Programs, Research and
Technology Transfer.

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 Table 1: Number of Lean processes/University in each key area of HEI
Bowling
University University University Renssealer University
Key Area \ University Green
of Central of New of Polytechnic of
University of Iowa State
Oklahoma Orleans Scranton Institute Wisconsin
University
Students 4 2 - 6 1 - 1
Programs - - - - - 1 -
Research - 2 - - - - -
Technology
- - - - - - -
transfer
Financial
1 1 - - - - -
Resources
Human
2 1 1 - - - -
Resources
Physical
7 1 - - - - -
Resources

5 CONCLUSIONS

The concepts of waste reduction and Lean are known for decades. Despite that, its application
to HEIs only arouse on the last decade. Moreover, the areas that have been tackled in the case
studies published this far are support processes similar to others in other organizations. The
most challenging core processes such as Programs, Research and Technology Transfer have
been left behind. There is still a long way to go through to really make the HEIs Lean. In one
of the first studies about Lean in HEIs, eight types of waste concerning the Teaching process
have been identified, but curiously it is hard to find a case where the implementation of the
Lean concept refers to this process.
The implementation of Lean on the core processes of a university is really like bringing down
a taboo. Teaching and research are two of the core processes of an HEI, and actually, the ones
that had almost no changes throughout the years. One of the reasons that might be behind the
inexistence of Lean implementations on the core processes is that an unsuccessful trial would
have negative consequences all over the HEI structure. Meanwhile with the identification of
four main categories of waste, that targets at most the support processes, it is getting easier to
recognize in which areas the Lean implementation would bring greater results to the HEIs.
There would have massive gains on efficiency for the HEIs, in costs and time, if they could

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focus their Lean implementation to reduce waste based on the four categories, however what
we see is that HEIs are focusing mainly on reducing Process Waste.
Besides the identification of the different categories and types of waste, we are able to say that
the Lean for HEIs is still a fresh concept, unlike the Lean Manufacturing that is considered
mature and reached the production lines all the way through.
The Lean concept for Services, specifically for the Education sector and HEIs, is taking small
steps and there are still a lot of areas to explore in order to add value to their once
“immutable” core processes.

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