Operations management body of knowledge and its relevance to manufacturing and service organizations.
| Autor | Peinado, Jurandir |
-
Introduction
There has been a lot of discussion over the last few decades about the growth of the services sector--in terms of nations' GDP and people's occupations--compared to the manufacturing sector, which had dominated the business scenario since craftsmen gave way to the factories of the industrial revolution.
Operations management is a discipline that originated to solve management problems in a factory environment, but since the mid-twentieth century researchers, lecturers and practitioners have begun to adapt the knowledge of the field to also support service operations.
This paper seeks to identify and distinguish, according to the sector (manufacturing or services), the operations management themes most valued by companies for hiring professionals. We did this by cataloguing and analyzing vacancy announcements related to operations management, presented by manufacturing and services companies in major Brazilian human resources websites. It is worth noting that there is a limitation to using open job vacancies as a proxy for the knowledge valued by organizations, since there may be no open positions due to them being filled. In this case, the proposed methodology would not capture the value of such knowledge for the organization. Nevertheless, all the qualifications demanded in job announcements reflect the type of knowledge that companies value. In addition, the use of a relatively large sample contributes to biases canceling each other, allowing a viable result from this survey.
From a theoretical perspective, the present study is justified by the possibility of increasing knowledge about the importance of specific topics, from operations management to organizational practice, which could guide new efforts by researchers to deepen the theoretical knowledge informing operations management teaching and practice. From a practical point of view, the identification and dissemination of topics in operations management that are more valued by companies, depending on the sector of activity, can help business administration researchers, lecturers and executives to understand what companies need most, contributing to the alignment of their efforts to make a difference in everyday business practice.
In the following sections, we present a brief discussion about the increasing importance of operations management in the service sector, showing that there is already concern in the literature about suitably adapting knowledge originally developed for the management of manufacturing operations to services operations management. Next, we discuss the methodology used in data collection and analysis, followed by the presentation and discussion of the results obtained. The paper closes with some final considerations, which include possible future studies and the limitations of the research undertaken here.
-
The growth of the service sector
In the last few decades, companies in the tertiary sector of the economy, i.e. the service sector, have increased their relative share in job creation and economic importance.
Gallie (1991) showed that prior to the First World War, about 80 percent of the employed population were manual workers, but by 1987 non-manual labor accounted for half of all jobs. With the increasing importance of service delivery, service operations management has become important in organizations' practice, and a relevant research topic within the broader field (Smith et al., 2007). According to Ricci and Rachid (2013), from 1994 to 2000 service sector employment grew by 141.3 percent, concurrent with a slowdown in the manufacturing industry. In 2007, according to the same authors, 31.7 percent of formal jobs were in the service sector. Heineke and Davis (2007) state that the service sector grew significantly in the late twentieth century, to the extent that 80 percent of jobs in the USA were offered by service companies. This rapid growth was caused by several factors, such as change in the population's lifestyle, deregulation and availability of better infrastructure, based on new information and communication technologies. As also pointed out by Heineke and Davis (2007), once the service sector surpassed 50 percent of the economy, which happened in the 1950s, researchers--especially economists--began to examine the characteristics of services and to adapt and apply concepts to them that had originally been developed to deal with manufacturing operations.
An outsourcing wave further fueled movement in this direction, with manufacturing companies beginning to hire services from specialized companies at lower cost and better quality than if performed internally. Activities such as property security, cleaning, building maintenance, industrial canteens and logistics services were transferred to external suppliers (Fitzsimmons and Fitzsimmons, 2010). Almeida (2004) had earlier identified this trend, stating that from 1977 to 2000 there was an increase of more than 15 percent in the services sector in Europe and Japan, and a similar growth in the USA. The increase in service activity was accompanied by a 20 percent reduction of the manufacturing sector in Europe and the USA, and 11 percent in Japan. Mechanization, automation and standardization also contributed to the increased relevance of service provision (Almeida, 2004).
Investigative studies that address the transition from an industrial society to a service society have been available for decades. Sullivan (1982) highlighted the challenges and demands of research in service operations management in light of some distinctive characteristics of services, such as intangibility, inseparability, heterogeneity and perishability. Machuca et al. (2007) performed a detailed survey of studies about service operations in the main operations management journals: International Journal of Operations & Production Management; International Journal of Production Economics; International Journal of Production Research; Journal of Operations Management (JOM); Production and Inventory Management; and Production and Operation Management Journal (POM). They concluded that 7.5 percent of papers published were linked to service operations management. At the same time, Smith et al. (2007) conducted an empirical evaluation of the productivity of researchers and institutions in service operations management in papers published in five important scientific journals: Manufacturing and Service Operations Management; Management Science; Operations Research; JOM; and POM. They mapped 463 papers published between 1990 and 2006, and found that the percentage of papers about service operations management roses from 7.0 percent in 1990 to 17.2 percent in 2006.
Chase and Apte (2007) discussed the role of services in national economies and the importance of scientific research on the topic, highlighting the importance of teaching operations management in universities to address service operations. Recently, Jung et al. (2015) developed a theoretical study involving socially responsible service operations management (SRSOM), which can be defined as the managerial activities of service operations concerning social responsibility and legal, ethical and environmental issues. The authors also referred to other studies published in the last 20 years that discuss SRSOM, demonstrating that interest in the topic increased exponentially over the analyzed period.
-
Shared knowledge of manufacturing operations and service operations management
A definition of services offered by Gadrey et al. (1995) treats service as an operation performed by a provider which aims at changing the customer's status, at the moment that the customer needs and with the customer's collaboration. According to these authors, the process ends up linking the result to the provider's knowledge structure. As it involves a transformation operation, the production of services can use tools, planning, and quality and control procedures originally devised and applied to manufacturing and industrial processes (Gadrey et al, 1995). As services are also produced through processes, their achievement can benefit from the know-how developed by manufacturing companies on the subject (Freire, 1998). The automation of processes ensures that, like manufacturers, service companies standardize what they deliver to the market, which is valued in several situations. According to Gallie (1991), there is a clear trend toward the standardization of non-manual work, which was formerly typical for manufacturing processes only. Service operations professionals are learning to think more and more about their processes in the same way as their counterparts in manufacturing operations.
According to Kon (2007), services are also part of the manufacturing process itself, often essential for the versatility of the production process. Areas such as logistics and quality management are examples of services that are crucial in manufacturing, as they add value to products and are key to manufacturers' ability to meet varied market requirements. In a previous study, Kon (1996) attributed versatility in production to manufacturers' ability to reduce the internalization of different stages of production, mainly service-related activities, by assigning part of their processes to third parties for economic and control reasons. According to the author, the standardization of industrial operations generates opportunities for companies that specialize in services that were previously carried out within the factories, providing them with more customers, reducing costs and improving related processes.
Bowen and Youngdahl (1998) considered that the philosophy of waste reduction and lean operations applied to industrial processes, as well as the constant search for efficiency in production, can be adapted and successfully used in processes in the services sector. As example, theories initially focused on lean manufacturing can be applied to service and...
Para continuar a ler
PEÇA SUA AVALIAÇÃOCOPYRIGHT GALE, Cengage Learning. All rights reserved.
