Arash Shahin - Department of Management, University of Isfahan, Isfahan, Iran
Maryam Ghasemaghaee - M.Sc. Student in Marketing Management, Department of Management, University of Isfahan,Isfahan, Iran

Comparing with other sectors, although the service sector has been growing fast and shares most of the revenue and employment worldwide, apparently its productivity and quality have not been growing. What is vital in today’s growing of the service sector is to have a better understanding of tools, techniques, and policies to help keep management’s focus on productivity and quality improvement. The rigorous application to the service sector of those engineering and management techniques that have been so effective in the manufacturing sector is a starting point for service managers to help them bring their companies back to life. In this paper, Poka yoke as one of the effective quality design techniques experienced in manufacturing has been suggested and developed for service fail-safing. For this purpose, the subjects of service failure and service recovery have been introduced. Then, service Poka yoke has been demonstrated and its solutions have been classified. Some case examples have been presented in three categories as layout, technology and self-service for a better understanding of the subject. This paper also has proposed a framework, by which the common and uncommon elements of service Poka yoke and Service recovery solutions have been classified and addressed schematically. The framework seems very helpful for the managers to focus on the more effective approaches, if they are about to fix problems at the design stage of the processes. Finally, some barriers and critical success factors of adopting Poka yoke in services applications has been discussed.

Service, Poka Yoke, Failure, Recovery solutions, Framework