Guests Win at Hotel through Lean Thinking

People tend to think of "lean" as a way to run a business that manufactures something, whether it is a vehicle or a can of food. But, lean can just as effectively be applied to a service industry, from healthcare to retail. Simply copying the tools and techniques of lean manufacturing, however, will be a path to sure disaster or at least disappointment. A lean service organization must focus on lean thinking in order to determine the right tools needed to solve the problems unique to service. It all starts with one question: What kind of organization do you need to become?

Consider the success of one hotel, the Novi, Michigan Marriott Towne Place Suites. This particular property has served many of clients of the Lean Learning Center (Novi), a leading provider of lean curriculum and consulting. Companies from all over the world send associates to attend classes at the Center. After seeing so many different types of companies stay at the hotel, Marriott Operations Manager Heidi Lyman decided to attend the Center's Lean Experience program, a five-day session that provides the foundation for lean transformation. This opened her eyes to the world of lean thinking.

As a result of applying lean to its operations, in less than one year the hotel's service score rose 10 points to 87 and went from the bottom half to the top 10 percent in its peer group. This improved score not only positively impacts hotel guests, but it also impacts the hotel's bottom line through repeat customer stays.

How did the hotel do it? Through the application of some basic lean principles, which are common in manufacturing, but have often failed in service due to a failure on the part of service organizations to not change the way they think. A change of thinking, as Heidi learned, can take an organization in an entirely different direction.

First of all, Heidi changed her vision of the ideal state. She went from thinking that she should have daily interaction with guests to believing that she didn't need to talk to guests at all -- and not because she didn't want to serve them. This new state was founded on the idea that if everything is working perfectly, processes happen and employees are equipped with what they need to support the guests. Hence, Heidi should not have to solve every problem herself, realizing that "not being needed" is a sign of a well-oiled machine. This is huge shift in thinking for this industry.

The second lean concept focused on was make connections to the customer. Within a hotel, the guest is certainly the end-customer. But, with Heidi's new vision of the ideal state, her employees, not the hotel guests, became her new direct customers. She made it her responsibility to understand what each of her employees needed in order to perform his or her task. This allowed her to spend more time designing the work and functions that would provide greater value to the guests.

Lastly, the hotel designed a responsive system. Heidi was there to serve the employees who, in turn, served the guests. She had to rethink and reexamine her role and her processes in order to now treat her employees as the customer. This worked well, since this was in line with the values of J.W. Marriott himself -- take care of the associates and they will take care of the guests.

For example, in assessing what was needed, she saw that the room cleaning process could use more support and structure. To accomplish this, a member of the cleaning staff was appointed as Team Leader. This person has many roles - getting parallel processes such as laundry started earlier instead of having to wait until everything was collected, performing room inspections to ensure quality and coaching staff on key job skills. But, perhaps the most important role is being that key go-to resource. After restructuring this process, it became standard protocol that when one of the cleaning crew enters a room and recognizes that the standard 50-minute cleaning time will be exceeded, the Team Leader is called in for backup. This ensures that every room will be done on time without adversely affecting the rest of the cleaning schedule.

Small changes like this have made cleaning more efficient and effective and, most importantly for the guests, cleaning is now more predictable and reliable. And, despite appointing one of the existing crew to the new Team Leader role, the hotel hasn't had to increase any paid-hours because of the efficiencies that were gained.

There are many other examples of this kind of improvement at the Novi Marriott, which are "invisible" to guests, but that, one-by-one, make this particular hotel a shining example of a lean service organization.