Is manufacturing important?
Any academic specialising in manufacturing management will have experienced the increasingly cynical, suspicious, and critical attitude of a new wave of service operations management researchers in the last decade. For example, Nigel Slack of Warwick and Cambridge Universities, in his keynote speech at the EurOMA/POMS 2003 Conference in Como, Italy, warned us that the few academics who hang onto their manufacturing research agenda are doomed to extinction in a future where only service operations management will prevail. While it is clear there are new avenues for research and theory building in service contexts that differ significantly from traditional manufacturing, one may wonder if the academic community is not the victim of a service “fetish”, a phenomenon that results in ignoring the potentially important results and lessons learned from manufacturing management research. Is there really nothing to learn from manufacturing? Should not manufacturing be considered with more intellectual curiosity and as a source of knowledge by service operations researchers?
Interestingly, in the field of OR (operational research), academics have engaged in system-level research, which flexibly considers both manufacturing and service operations systems. In the OR community, researching health care operations or assembly lines are two equally legitimate pursuits. Why should such a systems approach be so overtly criticised in operations management when it has been an accepted feature of operational research?
Beyond the academic quarrel, the answer of the question has consequences for teaching, research, and policy making. When we answer the question “Is manufacturing important?” we address questions about its role in the growth of economies and about its role in the shaping of work practices and work values.
Consider the example of Morocco, which 20 years ago was slightly more advanced than Malaysia economically. Today, Malaysia experiences a wealthy and growing economy thanks to having become one the manufacturing powerhouses of the world. In contrast Morocco's manufacturing sector remains a weak contributor to economic wealth. Whereas the two countries were economically almost at the same level 20 years ago, Morocco has not changed, and therefore now lags well behind Malaysia.
In Morocco, factories serving the local market operate well below World Class standards, and most of the remainder are offshore textile factories. Today, the Moroccan economy is experiencing a sudden vibrancy thanks to investments in the service sector; mainly in IT and call centre outsourcing. Could it finally take-off in terms of economic development and bypass the traditional “manufacturing”phase in its economic history? This question is of critical and vital importance for policy makers in countries such as Morocco. It is only by analysing the relationship between manufacturing and service management that this question,and appropriate development policies, can be articulated.
The question is not “Does a country need to go through a manufacturing phase before evolving a service economy?”. In fact for an economy that has not experienced a manufacturing era the relevant question should be “What are the missing work values, managerial tools and techniques that have never been assimilated by that country's human capital, and thus need to be acquired by other means?”
In the last six months some of the main headlines of a local Moroccan newspaper have included the following issues: ... Owing to an unannounced three-day holiday, the port of Casablanca has become jammed with delayed ships,and incoming ships had to wait several days offshore before they could unload their cargos ... Waiting lines at the main airport (Casablanca) can last more than one hour during the tourist season, bringing the total time from the aeroplane to the car park close to the flight time in most cases! ... Although accurate forecasts of the number of cars travelling to Morocco are prepared each year, the wait for Europe-Morocco ferry crossings has become infamous for taking up to several days instead of 1-3 hours.
All these issues are about service industries, but when observed more closely they are very similar to traditional manufacturing management problems. It is unlikely that such a country will have a role in modern service economies when its cost advantage in delivering services has been eroded. Despite the modern vision of manufacturing as a dying research field perhaps manufacturing research and excellence have resulted in much more technology diffusion than modern service researchers are happy to acknowledge.
Michel LeseureAl Akhawayn University, Ifrane, Morocco
