The Craft Era

The scratch line major era is at present referred to as chi shadowerery manufacturing and usefulness shop delivery. This agreement was European in origin and colligate to the way in which skills were developed the apprenticejourneyman master progression, which guide to the creation of guilds of skilled people who sought to control the supply of their speciality, and the integrating of skill within a subsector of society (as, for example, skills were passed on from father to son).This was remark for low-volume, spunky-variety harvest-homes, where workers tended to be passing skilled and part was built into the very work out of operations. It was in any case appropriate for largely national commercializes, supplied internally with minimal imports and exports. whatsoever maneuver manufacturing still remains today, in markets where exotic products and go can control demands through some unique feature or high level of desirability. For instance, some house building, fu rniture devising, clock and watch making argon still carried out by skilled craftsmen/women working on a single or few items of output at a time.While the butt ones and techniques used by these craftsmen/women ar highly inefficient, the unique whole step of their products commands a premium price, as illustrated by the secondhand value of products much(prenominal) as a Daniels pocket watch or a Morgan car. In the case of Morgan, however, it is a mistake to conclude that the passenger car patience might still be adequate to em contrivance craft product. Morgan is unashamedly part of a sector that is closer to specialist toys than that concerned with face-to-face transportation. It is also the end of a very thin tail, other move of which (AC, Aston Martin, Rolls Royce, etc. have already been absorbed by volume producers, perspicacious to operate in exotic niches for purposes that be closer to corporate advert than to income generation. In the clothing industry, one signif icant sector of the industry haute couture is establish on the craft production approach. In services, the craft era has also continued perhaps blush more so than in manufacturing. The long-playing pace of change within services derives from the extent to which customer impact operations can adopt new technologies and new systems.Only services that require little skill at the operating level (such as FMCG or petrol retailing) or processing large amounts of information (such as financial services) are significantly different now from what they were like even 30 years ago. Many services such as hotels, schools, hospitals, hairdressers, vehicle repair and transportation have changed very little, despite new technologies. The softwood production era The second major era is known as lot production, although once again its principles were by no means limit to manufacturing.This system grew in North America to accommodate three hint requirements of the developing giant the need to export, the need to provide employment for a massive, largely unskilled workforce, and the need to establish itself as a humankind player, which meant infiltrating other regions with ideas all the way associated with the USA. In short, the Americans could non play by the European rules, so they reinvented the game innovating by destroying the competitive position of craft production.The system was massively successful and changed the working and buying practices of the world in the premier(prenominal) three decades of the twentieth century. In order to merchandise the standardized products make by standardized operations practices, mass production had to standardize the market requirements too. Fortunately, the market was immature and would do what it was told to do. Thus, mass production reversed the picture of craft production volume was high with little variety.The marketing ploy (and the resultant manufacturing strategy) was exemplified by Henry Fords famous declaration , from now on, a customer can have a car multicolored any colour he likes, as long as it is bootleg In mass production, workers were typically unskilled. This was the era owing much to the plowshare of F. W. Taylors Scientific Management, whereby workers had very narrowly defined jobs, involving repetitive tasks, and quality was left to quality experts at the final stage of the overall process rather than being an integral part of operations at individually step (Taylor, 1912).Taylor enabled firms, for the first time, to control costs, times and resources, rather than rely on skilled craftsmen and women to decide what was appropriate. Coupled with the developments made in mechanization and employee co-ordination during the European industrial revolutions, Taylors ideas provided an entirely different way of operating. In 1926, encyclopedia Britannica asked Henry Ford to christen his system and he called it mass production. He meant mass in the sense of large volume production.P erhaps he did not see the other meaning of mass as fundamental and cumbersome, which is what the system turned out to be (in terms of concern systems and superstructure), once the market no longer bought what it was told. These principles originating in the 1920s were retard to be adopted in services, but by the 1970s, Ted Levitt, from Harvard Business School, was able to identify the production-lining (Levitt, 1972) of service and the industrialization (Levitt, 1976) of service. He cited fast food, the automatic bank clerk machine (ATM) outside banks and supermarket retailing as examples of this.Schmenner (1986) coined the phrase mass service to exemplify this type of service operation. More recently, the aspects of working life that are typical in this mass production context have been increase to life in general by Ritzer (1993), who refers to it as the McDonaldization of society. The shift from craft marketing to marketing in the mass production age is clearly demarcated by the publication of Levitts (1960) article in the Harvard Business go off entitled Marketing myopia.In mass production, customers bought what was supplied producers concentrated on keeping costs, and hence prices, down, and focused on selling to customers through pugnacious advertising and sales forces. As organizations were product-led, operations management was relatively straightforward. bundle producing goods at the lowest cost meant minimizing component and product variety, large production runs and scientific management. The success of Ford made this view highly persuasive.In 1909, the Model T automobiles were sold for $950, but by 1916, following the unveiling of the assembly line, it had fallen to $345, and three-quarters of the cars on American roads were built by Ford (Bryson, 1994). However, as Levitt (1960) pointed out, Ford was eventually outstripped by General Motors, who were not product-led but market-led. They gave customers what they wanted choice, model update s, a range of colours (not moreover black ). The symbol of this age is the brand.Originally (in the craft era) the brand was a mark on the product, often a signature for example, on a painting or symbol, signifying its ownership or origin. But in mass production the brand took on far more significance. It became the means by which one product (or service) could differentiate itself from a competitors product (or service). Procter & Gamble set up brand managers in 1931 to sell their different soap products. Later the brand also became a ensure of product/service quality.Kemmons Wilsons motivation in 1952 to open the first Holiday Inn hotel was his own disappointment with the ariable standards and sleaziness of the motels he stayed in whilst on a family holiday. The success of delivering a consistently standard level of service resulted in Wilson opening one hotel every two and half eld in the mid-1950s. But by the 1990s, brands had come under threat. Markets are highly fragme nted, the proliferation of niches makes target marketing more difficult, product and service life cycles are shortening, and product/service innovation is quicker than ever before change magnitude customer sophistication has reduced the power of advertising.As a result, a more holistic view of operations management is required, as Crainer (1998) suggests Companies mustiness add value throughout every single process they are involved in and then translate this into better value for customers. This is because the ripe era has brought profound changes in operations management and operations has to be at the heart of successful strategic thinking.