Vanishing Boundaries

Businesses need to become more consumer-centric, efficient, and quality conscious. Yet global competition and supply chain complexity are increasing so rapidly that managers must reach across the manufacturing and service boundary to gather more universally applicable ideas. Vanishing Boundaries: How Integrating Manufacturing and Services Creates Customer Value, Second Edition addresses the unprecedented array of new conditions that today’s business managers must face.

The book is a revision of the authors’ previous book, New Methods of Competing in the Global Marketplace, Critical Success Factors from Service and Manufacturing. The concepts underpinning the first edition continue to be relevant today and, in this revised edition, are complemented with coverage of additional emerging issues in today’s business environment. The basic theme of the book is captured in its title and illustrated with the addition of case studies of some of today’s most prominent companies.

• The emerging relationship between risk management and supply management
• Risk management, and its corollary, crisis management
• Trends in outsourcing, such as near-sourcing and in-sourcing
• Health care improvement programs to reduce cost and improve quality
• Sustainability – alternative energy infrastructure and the triple bottom line
• Integration of supply chain services to align goods, information and funds flows
• Advances in information technology, i.e., cloud computing, videoconferencing
• Present, and potential, role of social media in attracting customers, servicing customers and building network trading partners.

This second edition creates greater awareness of the benefits that businesses can gain by sharing techniques and methodologies across the manufacturing/services boundary. The book emphasizes that successful change management requires a holistic focus on three levels of an organization - its technology, infrastructure, and organizational culture. It includes solutions and implementation strategies for risk and crisis management, sourcing, healthcare, alternative energy infrastructure, integration of supply chain services, advances in IT, social media, and customer relationship building.