Can anyone provide some insights about "lean operations" in Telco? Best performers, best approaches,... Thank you : )

Lean operator deals with OSS/BSS transformation dealing with orchestration of people, business process, technology working in tandem proving lean services. The questions you asked are are project specific. However, recommend you look up www. TMForum.org and click on Frameworx.

Lean operator deals with OSS/BSS transformation dealing with orchestration of people, business process, technology working in tandem providing lean services. The questions you asked are are project specific. However, recommend you look up www. TMForum.org and click on Frameworx.

Joan, “lean operation” in telcos typically comes in two principal guises. You either automate your operations as much as possible or you outsource, though I admit that my “wisdom” mostly is based on my experience with European and Middle East operators.

There are different examples for both these cases.

Automation
When you look across the operation life cycle from planning to implementation to actual operation, service providers usually start automating the more repetitive tasks such as configuration and fault/incident management where traditionally most of the resources tend to go.
This ideally requires a sound technology stack i.e. your OSS and underlying network / IT components need to be up to date. In many operators this is not the case, and they are still hanging on to 20 years old mainframe systems in some cases. Planning and implementation aspects are somewhat harder to get “lean” although there are example of “access node factories” in Deutsche Telekom through which most of the installation and configuration is done centrally before shipping kit out to the field.
For a full automation you would have cloudified components and systems available in your network. Telia has started rolling out such a system (4G/5G) earlier this year. Once this is in place you can use cloud technologies in a similar way that Facebook or Google use them when they operate their huge server farms. Automating your network using “cloud technologies” is expected to cut down your operation staff by a factor of 5 to 10! You set it up once, you build up a huge repository of test cases that run automatically and continually, your orchestrator software e.g. ETSI MANO runs all the scripts to configure your network components, reacts to incidents and tries to “self heal”.
You also introduce software updates piece meal in small increments and roll back seamlessly if you run into problems. So, no more lengthy big upgrade projects that eat up a lot of your operation resources. Well, that’s the goal anyway…
Unfortunately, most vendors are not there yet (they have virtualised appliances that do not conform to a microservice architecture required for true cloudification and vendor independence). Also, most (network) operation departments in service providers are pretty clueless as all of the network functions now run as software on commercial IT.
But it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be moving towards this goal.

Outsourcing
This is a route many (mainly small) network operators have taken over the past decade. There are operators, for example in the Netherlands (I won’t name names here), that are pretty much 100% dependent on their supplier running the show. They don’t have any meaningful (technology) expertise left in their ranks and simply pay the supplier’s headcount at a premium. But they are as lean as it gets.
The same picture holds across most of the Middle East.
I am personally not really in favour of these outsourcing approaches. Operators will not be masters of their own destiny anymore, and all their “innovation initiatives” are by and large empty shells scratching at the surface.
If I was an operator, I would want to be able to introduce innovations quickly and securely myself and not wait until my supplier can write me a piece of software.
This situation, by the way is one reason why operators are lamenting about being “disrupted” because other companies eat their lunch by launching and selling innovative solutions far more quickly than these telco dinosaurs can.

Joan, lean operations came from Toyota Production System and means without waste in process or Just In Time.
From that perspective Lean operations in telco would be self service and tailored products and “Zero Touch Provisioning” (Fulfillment)  with predictive and preventive fault repair (Assurance). If this means lean - there is no one lean telco in the world.
If we measure lean as a level of automation of processes per product you might have very automated process for provisioning and vary lousy for fault repair for the same product.
Lean in Toyota terms (7 wastes) means without waiting, without over stock, without missing stock, without overproduction, without rework, without unnecessary motion, without unnecessary transportation.
For lean telco you must set environment which supports lean habits for all employees. Telco means that technology will make it lean but this is not the case. As far I know about telcos they are very “traditional” regarding internal operational transformation. Just few examples to prove it. Telco promotes public cloud solutions for customers for reducing cost of IT systems. The question: How many telcos has there business systems set on public cloud? Probably they will also reduce the cost if this is true. Telco promotes world w/o papers and signatures. The question how many papers you have to sign or get after you purchase telco service or prolong your contract?
Go internally in telco. How many internal corespondent in telco is by electronic paper (pdf) or real paper. Take only invoice verification process and you will see how many papers, approvals, excels you will have in just one “simple” process in telco.
Conclusion. For lean company you must set up environment of trust, responsibility, team autonomy and supporting innovation = agile environment. Unfortunately, I have work for and seen less technology supported companies who are more lean then telco I had worked.

Hi Joan, Most of the points have been already covered very well. Apart from documenting existing processes and automating them, you may want to ask the question"why” for some of them. Typically business processes in a running telco would have been built over 8-10 years of its existence since launch and what was good 5 years ago may not be good any more (Unless it is a compliance/regulatory requirement). In my experience, your decision criteria for Automation/outsource should include real necessity of that process from customer service perspective. Hope this helps, BR Dinesh

I would strongly suggest to look back into manufacturing before thinking what is “lean Telco” :) Having been on both sides - telco and manufacturing, I should say that definitely telcos have to implement many principles of LEAN even before talking about automatization, cloudification, etc. LEAN principles are quite simple but looking back to my telco experience I wonder why I have not used them in day-to-day network operations before I got a chance to work at manufacturing :( LEAN toolset does not require advanced systems and complex IT - it is a mindset!
On other side if we define “lean Telco” = “cost-efficient Telco” then I would suggest to check AT Kearny studies - they have comparative studies analyzing Telco operators vs. their revenues/CAPEX/OPEX bases.