Vanishing boundaries : how integrating manufacturing and services creates customer value

"Foreword We are now more than a decade past the turn of the millennium. Economic recession, a gridlocked American political system, unexpected weather extremes including Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy, and global economic instability precipitated by uncertainty over the future of the Euro and top leadership change in China have fueled an extraordinarily tough business environment. The modern economic world--shaped by the Industrial Revolution, followed by the information age, followed by a flattened global economy--is morphing again. Today, service enterprises that offer lower-paying jobs outnumber manufacturing enterprises that offer higher-paying jobs. There is high unemployment. Jobs that are available go unfilled because of the gaps between the focus of our education system and the skill sets now required for business success. There is a vanishing boundary between manufacturing and service, which has huge, unsettling implications, to giant multinational companies and tiny startups. Those of us in manufacturing feel the uncertainty of these times. We are looking for new solutions, that new competitive edge, to ensure the survival of our enterprise and growth in the near term. Adoption of the latest trends, such as social media and cloud computing, scream through the headlines that our organizations must change ... somehow. Manufacturing is slipping away, and value-added service is hard. But the pace of business is so intense that we do not have time to research and assimilate all the possibilities. In fact, it may not be clear where to focus our collective energies, or even how to get started"--