News & Events

For the past thirty years, the world has seen the evolution and settlement of an efficient global supply chain in almost all manufacturing industries. Manufacturing companies, irrespective of the markets they serve, have figured out how to create efficient manufacturing and supply chain systems that enable the production and marketing of quality products to ever expanding markets. This is true for the entire gamut of products from the most sophisticated (such as aircraft engines) to the relatively unsophisticated (such as plastic toys). A variety of factors have resulted in the globalization of manufacturing systems - but the end result has been better products at lower prices, leading to a significant expansion of the markets served - additional new segments such as the SME segment and new geographies such as the developing countries.

 

We are about to witness a similar phenomenon in the services industry. Because the services sectors are more people oriented (people serving people), they have historically remained localized in a geographical sense. The phenomenal growth in voice and data communication services over the past 10 years led by new technologies and rapidly falling prices has essentially provided a death blow to distance. The impact of this is now the possibility of combining different sets of people virtually, while at the same time taking advantage of global talent at different prices in different time zones.

 

While there are similarities between what happened in the world of manufacturing and what is about to happen in the world of services, a piece of manufacturing equipment (which accounts for a large part of the production value creation) is not the same as an individual (a real human being) delivering services. There are the challenges of culture, of work schedules, of real time work versus non real time work, etc.