How people speak is as important as the words they say when it comes to sentiment analysis. "The human voice is made of many repeating patterns," said Amir Liberman, CEO of Nemesysco. "Everything that attracts your attention will generate a slight disturbance in these patterns. We look carefully at this voice chart, and we identify disturbances."

Why have companies been so slow to apply lean principles and techniques to service processes such as finance, human resources, accounting, health care, and customer service? One reason is that the waste and inefficiency that can interfere with services are rarely obvious.

Bereket Döner, one of Turkey's largest producers of frozen and ready-to-serve meat products, is employing radio frequency identification to track its goods as they are loaded onto pallets, weighed and shipped to customers.

Nearly two-thirds of businesses (61 percent) surveyed in North America and Europe recognize that the post-holiday period represents the most challenging time of the year due to the high numbers of returns, according to an Intermec study. Yet despite this, more than half (52 percent) of distribution center managers admit they don't have the appropriate processes and tools in place to determine if returned goods should be discarded, returned to vendor or moved quickly back into inventory.