JIT resourcing in service operations

Abstract

As economies move into next stage of growth trajectory, service sector starts taking larger share of countries GDP. Globalization has shrunk the world boundaries and increasingly service firms are faced with global competition. To strive in highly competitive landscape, firm needs to create and deliver value to the customers. It calls for cost-effective service operation practices by adopting methodologies such as JIT. Application of JIT methodologies in service business is not as widely discussed as use of JIT in manufacturing business. In this study, we try to understand the extent of application of JIT in service business. The study is divided largely into two parts: desk research and survey research. In desk research, we reviewed the existing literature and documented our findings of the research work done till day. Survey research focused on evaluating the extent service firms use JIT for efficient business operation management and how they have benefited. Using survey response, JIT scores were calculated for each of the respondent firms. Study benchmarked 70 % as the cut off score to categorize an organization as a JIT or anon-JIT organization. Based on the criterion, 60 % of the respondent organizations were classified as JIT. The survey covered Banking, IT/ITES and Health industries across both public and private sectors. Evaluation of JIT score revealed that no particular industry outperformed the other in application of JIT principles. In addition, study found no major difference between JIT scores of private companies and public sector companies. The study measures organizations on four JIT percepts namely Human Resource Planning, People, Organization Structure and Culture, Technology and Process Improvement. Across organizations, study observed least variation in adoption of Technology perspective and maximum variation in adoption of Human Resource Planning perspective.