..., to examine its implications for research and practice. Design/methodology/approach The author proposes the combination of three lean tools in order to design a service quality system that has customer expectations (CEs) as the first input. These tools are quality function deployment (QFD), Hoshin Kanri...

... significant business change decisions, the insights of Hoshin Kanri's philosophy of management, which fosters communication such that everyone in an organization is working toward a common goal, and “rapidmarking” of business improvements. Practical implications These approaches, while complementary, do...