Benefits of Service Blueprinting

 Facilitates a top down, bottom up approach

 Facilitates internal communication between departments and SBUs

David Maister coined the acronym OTSU (“opportunity to screw up”) to highlight the importance of
thinking about all the things that might go wrong in delivering a particular type of service.

Japanese approach to 'mistake proofing' in all aspects of manufacturing, customer service, procurement,
etc. In fact, the original term was Baka-Yoke or “fool-proof”. Due to the inappropriateness of the term,
“mistake-proofing” became the preferred term.

The concept developed out of the need to achieve quality in production processes. It was Shigeo Shingo,
one of the pioneers of the Toyota Production System, who proposed the concept. Richard Chase and
Douglas Steward introduced this concept to fail-safe service processes.

One of the most useful Total Quality Management (TQM) methods in manufacturing is the application of
poka-yoke, or fail-safe, methods to prevent errors in manufacturing processes.

Server poka-yokes ensure that service employees do things correctly, as requested, in the right order
and at the right speed. Examples include surgeons whose surgical instrument trays have indentations for
each instrument. For a given operation, all of the instruments are nested in the tray so it is clear if the
surgeon has not removed all instruments from the patient before closing the incision.

Customer poka-yokes usually focus on preparing the customer for the encounter (including getting them
to bring the right materials for the transaction and to arrive on time, if applicable), understanding and
anticipating their role in the service transaction, and selecting the correct service or transaction.
Examples that prepare the customer for the encounter include printing dress code requests on
invitations, sending reminders of dental appointments, and printing guidelines on customer cards

A bottleneck is a point of congestion in a production system) that occurs when workloads arrive too
quickly for the production process to handle.
Service process redesign revitalizes processes that have become outdated. However that doesn’t
necessarily mean the processes were poorly designed in the first place. Rather, changes in technology,
customer needs, added service features, and new offerings may have made existing processes crack and
creak.
Characterized the problem as “institutional rust” and declared: “Institutions are like steel beams—they
tend to rust. What was once smooth, shiny and nice tends to become rusty.”13 He suggested two main
reasons for this situation.

The first involves changes in the external environment that make existing practices obsolete and require
redesign of the underlying processes

The second reason it reflects a natural deterioration of internal processes, creeping bureaucracy, or the
evolution of spurious, unofficial standards.

Service Process Redesign Should Improve Both Quality and Productivity: Key performance measures

1. Reduced number of service failures.

2. Reduced cycle time from customer initiation of a service process to its completion.

3. Enhanced productivity.

4. Increased customer satisfaction

Blueprinting also clarifies whether the customer’s role in a given service process is primarily that of
passive recipient or entails active involvement in creating and producing the service.

Customer participation refers to the actions and resources supplied by customers during service
production and/or delivery, including mental, physical, and even emotional inputs.

LOW - Employees and systems do all the work. Payment may be the only required customer input.

MEDIUM - customer inputs are required to assist the firm in creating and delivering service and in
providing a degree of customization.

HIGH - customers work actively with the provider to co-produce the service. Service cannot be created
without the customer’s active participation. In fact, if customers fail to assume this role effectively and
don’t perform certain mandatory production tasks, they will jeopardize the quality of the service
outcome.

“partial employees” who can influence the productivity and quality of service processes and outputs

firms should target their marketing efforts to recruit new customers who have the competency to
perform the necessary tasks. (Many colleges do just this in their student selection process!)

In effect, the customer’s time and effort replaces that of a service employee.