Field versus Factory

Field versus Factory

       People think of service as quite differnt from manufacturing. Service is presumed to be performed by individuals for other individuals, generally on a one-to-one basis. Manufacturing is presumed to be performed by machines, generally tended by cluster of individuals whose sizes and configurations are themselves dictated by the machines' requirements. Service (whether customer service or the service of service industries) is performed "out there in the field" by distant and lossely supervised pople working under highly variable, and often volatile, conditions. Manufacturing occurs "here in the factory'' under highly centralized, carefully organized, tightly controlled, and elaboratelyenginerred conditions.
       People assume, and rightly so, that these differences largely explain why product produced in the factory are generally more uniform in features and quality than the services produced (e.g., life insurance policies, machine repairs) or delivered (e.g., spare parts, milk) in the field. One cannot as easily control one's agents or their performance out there in the field. Besides, different customers want different things. The result is that service and service industries, in comparison with manufacturing industries, are widely and correctly viewed as being primitive, sluggish, and inefficient.
      Yet it is doubtful that things need be all that bad. Once conditions in the field get the same kind of attention that conditions inside the factory generally get, a lot of new opportunities become possible. But first management will have to revise its thinking about what service is and what it implies.