Twenty years research on lean management in services: results from a meta-review

As the concept of lean management is becoming more and more popular for service companies, the question arises on the applicability of lean management and its effects. This article is the first to systematically review the current literature using ideas from evidence‐based medicine. To conduct this analysis a stepwise meta‐review is used: 1) identification of relevant journals; 2) depiction of 80 relevant articles within these journals; 3) empirical evaluation of the content of the articles based on ideas from evidence‐based medicine. The results show that literature insufficiently explains how lean can be applied to services. Most articles are limited to case studies, and findings are only partly rigorous. Existing empirical knowledge is based more on anecdotal evidence than on established facts. Concluding, more rigorous research has to be undertaken to thoroughly derive methods and identify obstacles to successful implementation, as well as causes and effects of lean implementation in services.