Review the Operational Excellence Factors of Service Firms: A Literature Review

Abstract

Operational excellence is considered as a competitive weapon for firms, both in service and manufacturing. Firms should therefore carefully study their operation strategy choices due to the high impact that results from applying operation strategy decisions on operational excellence. There are many factors that can lead to operational excellence, including leadership, human resource management practices, operations strategy, and involvement culture, and these will be the focus of this work.

This research reviews the literature related to operations and excellence in service firms. Moreover, it investigates the factors that affect the operational excellence of service sector.  In the literature, operational excellence for the service sector is still ambiguous. This research is an attempt to take advantage of the developments made in the industrial field, while at the same time drawing together different factors that have been studied separately in the past. We propose a theoretical framework that investigates some factors that affect operational excellence. Therefore, we propose implementing our theoretical model in the service sector, amongst others. Moreover, we suggest a further investigation on the obstacles may face the firms to reach operational excellence.