Yes. In my book The Continuous Improvement Primer, I wrote this:

Lean is about obtaining a continual and even flow in all activities using a minimum of time and resources.

...

Kaizen is the Japanese term for Continuous Improvement or change for the better or good change. Rather than a concept of Continuous Improvement Kaizen is a philos-ophy or personal mentality.

The word Kaizen is composed of two words: KAI (to change) + ZEN (to improve) = KAIZEN.

The Kaizen philosophy has its roots in Japanese culture long before The Toyota Pro-duction System, Lean and Six Sigma. Kaizen can probably be traced back to the Zen Buddhism and all the individual martial arts like Archery, Kendo, Jujutsu, and Kara-te. In all those Martial Arts lifestyle activities the real battle is the fight against one-self, constantly struggling to improve and to do it a little better next time.

This philosophy is also consistent with Lean's idea to compete against perfection. A company should not compete against its competitors but against perfection Ohno 1988).

Masaaki Imai was the man who made Kaizen into a business-concept in Japan and he later introduced Kaizen to the West through his book from 1986 “KAIZEN – The key to Japan’s Competitive Success”.

The essence of Kaizen is simple and straightforward: Kaizen means improvement. More-over, Kaizen means ongoing improvement involving everyone, including both managers and workers.

The kaizen philosophy assumes that our way of life — be it our working life, our social life, or our home life — deserves to be constantly improved (Imai, 1986)

Now a days Kaizen is often mentioned as being a part of the Lean toolbox (Kaizen events and Kaizen blitz) and it has become a well-proven and tested concept.

When the company progressively has been restructured using other Lean-tools like 5S, SMED, and TPM, then it’s important to maintain the quality level and continu-ously improve processes, quality and working methods.

The focus should be on the individual processes involved in creating a product, ra-ther than on the final product, which in reality is the opposite of what we normally do when we make quality control of the output.

Usually we say, “the objective justifies the means” but not with Kaizen. Here the mean ("the path" / “the method”) is as important as the goal itself.

It’s about carrying out regular assessments and improvements of processes, usually by focusing on waste (incl. waste of time) "MUDA" in the processes, as a way of adding value and improve the value chain.

If a process is clean, safe, effective and consistent then the result will always be of high quality.

That is, Kaizen aims to create a corporate philosophy that encourages everyone to make changes for the better.

... (some text from chapter 2)

Hi Adyl,

Please see a list of papers related to Lean in the service industry. Hope they help you in your research:

Paper 1:

https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=lean+in+service+industry&btnG=#d=gs_qabs&p=&u=%23p%3DxZesFNG3vzwJ

Paper 2:

Article Lean Six Sigma in a service context: A multi-factor applicat...

Paper 3:

Article Lean transformation in the pure service environment: The cas...

Here’s a few more that might be of some interest:

Paper 4:

Article A comparative analysis of integrating lean concepts into sup...

Paper 5:

https://s3.amazonaws.com/academia.edu.documents/37706363/LSS_for_Service.pdf?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAIWOWYYGZ2Y53UL3A&Expires=1545562841&Signature=MNZCKyVkYlmxBH0rdHkt5sV4Eo8%3D&response-content-disposition=inline%3B%20filename%3DLean_Six_Sigma_for_Service_How_to_Use_Le.pdf

Paper 6:

http://www.farrell-associates.com.au/Ops%20Mgmt/Lean%20Service%20machine.pdf

Paper 7:

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Effendi_Mohamad/post/How_to_map_the_Value_Stream_for_a_service_organization/attachment/59d63a67c49f478072ea69bd/AS%3A273729140002816%401442273520170/download/Zoe_Radnor.pdf

Paper 8:

Article Call Centers as Lean Service Environments: Job-Related Strai...

Paper 9:

Article High quality and low cost: The lean service centre

Paper 10:

http://www.sel.unsl.edu.ar/ApuntesMaes/Anteriores/MetodologiasAgiles/LeanThinking.pdf

Paper 11:

https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?start=20&q=lean+in+service+industry&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5#d=gs_qabs&p=&u=%23p%3DuRYkxhw1xPsJ

Dear friends, thank you for such professional and especially intersting answers! Best regards,

Adyl

No problem Adyl,

All the best with your research.

Yeah lean and kaizen can play key improvement roles in services.

Dear Dr. Ravishankar,

thank for the reply. It is very helpful.

Regards,

Adyl

Dear Adyl Aliekperov,

In my opinion, if not entirely at least in certain aspects so, such management concepts can be implemented into service companies. In addition to the general classification of business entities, there are also many other determinants shaping the implementation of management concepts such as Lean and Kaizen that can shape the use of management concepts to a greater or lesser extent to improve management processes and improve the efficiency of a specific company.

Best wishes

Dear Dr. Prokopowicz,

thank you for sharing your knowledge. It is very helpful.

Best regards,

Adyl

I've applied in my service based office. It was a tremendous success.