William E. Youngdahl

“Lean” service: in defense of a production‐line approach

The desirability of transferring manufacturing logic and practices to service operations, strongly advocated by Levitt (1972; 1976) in two classic Harvard Business Review articles two decades ago, is now commonly challenged by both service researchers and practitioners. We defend a “production‐line approach to service” by arguing that services can “reindustrialize” by applying revised, progressive manufacturing technologies. We describe how services businesses such as Taco Bell, Southwest Airlines, and Shouldice Hospital have mastered what we call “lean” service ‐ the application of lean manufacturing principles to their own service operations. Overall, services tend to be innovation laggards, compared to manufacturing. Looking ahead, mass customization can be viewed as the convergence of service and manufacturing logic.

On the relationship between customer participation and satisfaction: two frameworks

Presents a programme of research from which a typology of service customers’ quality assurance behaviours was developed. The typology’s four behaviours define the broad range of service customers’ participation in service quality assurance. Examines the relationship between these behaviours and satisfaction. Presents an initial conceptualization of a service customer’s value chain constructed from these behaviours. Provides implications for services marketing, human resource management and service operations. In sum, the two conceptual frameworks presented in this research add to researchers’ and practitioners’ understanding of how customer participation in service delivery is related to satisfaction.

Service Driven Global Supply Chains

Value‐added services expand manufacturing organizations’ ability to compete beyond traditional measures of manufacturing competitiveness such as cost, quality, flexibility, and delivery. This concept of expanding the roles of factories to include service has received considerable attention and wide acceptance among both researchers and practitioners. For example, recent empirical studies have demonstrated that manufacturing performance, particularly delivery performance can be enhanced through expanded service roles that focus on effective information flows within the company and to external customers. Despite such benefits, the scope of analysis has been limited to individual manufacturing organizations. Given the realities of global competition, practitioners require knowledge that extends beyond individual organizations. The domain of their problems includes the complexities of interactions with multiple stakeholders along global supply chains. The purpose of this paper, therefore, is to extend the concept of the service factory to global supply chains. Specifically, the approach will be to provide a conceptualization of the role of service in global supply chain management that can be used as a starting point for discussion and further research in this area. We provide several propositions and conclude with implications for both researchers and practitioners.

Revisiting customer participation in service encounters: does culture matter?

Abstract Service customers expend significant effort through a variety of behaviors, before, during, and after encounters, to increase the likelihood of satisfactory service experience or to salvage failing service encounters. Service customers’ satisfaction-seeking behaviors are both proactive and reactive in terms of both intent and execution. These behaviors include preparation, relationship building, information exchange, and intervention. This extension of the original research was presented by Youngdahl and Kellogg [Journal of Operations Management 15 (1997) 19]. It provides an examination of how robust the satisfaction-seeking behaviors are across cultures. The overall question is whether people in different cultures would use similar participative behaviors. We also examined whether or not culture is related to service customers’ effort and satisfaction. The counter-intuitive findings indicate that service customers’ satisfaction-seeking behaviors are not related to their cultural orientations. Additionally, culture is not related to effort or satisfaction level. The implication is that prescriptions derived from earlier research on these forms of service participation can be applied both across cultures and to any culturally diverse customer base.

Service offshoring: the evolution of offshore operations

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of economic development on culture and the significance of cultural change on the evolution of offshoring of services and knowledge‐based activities.Design/methodology/approach – The paper offers a conceptual model that links economic development, national cultural predispositions, and the future of offshoring service and knowledge functions. It builds on a range of academic literatures within these core areas to derive a set of propositions that offer insights into the manner in which the relative success and evolution of offshoring service and knowledge work would be impacted by a countrys economic development posture and its cultural roots and value systems. The model presented here is also well complemented by examples from real offshoring projects to offer the reader a comprehensive picture of the central propositions put forth.Findings – Several propositions, formulated at the multidisciplinary intersection of service operations managemen...

An investigation of service‐based manufacturing performance relationships

Reports recent findings of a two‐phase study investigating new dimensions of manufacturing competitiveness, factory‐based services. Examines relationships between broadly defined service role performance and manufacturing performance. Data were provided by 64 manufacturing firms from the USA, Canada and the UK. Also addresses under what conditions a vital element of such service‐information would be of greatest benefit to the factory’s key internal customer ‐ marketing. A survey of manufacturing and marketing respondents within 32 organizations provides empirical evidence of the positive relationship between factory information measured as a service construct and delivery performance. Anecdotal evidence from interviews provides additional insight into the roles of organizational structure and information technology with respect to the information component of factory‐based service.

Integrated Manufacturing Strategy: A Prerequisite for Environmental Excellence

This paper is based upon a framework which links the effective integration of manufacturing strategy into overall corporate strategy (Wheelwright and Hayes 1985) and corporate attainment of environmental excellence (Winsemius and Guntram 1992). By exploring the practical implications of this framework, the paper suggests that improvement of environmental performance may depend on adequate integration of manufacturing strategy into overall corporate strategy. Hence, situations may commonly exist where corporate goals for environmental excellence remain unachieved due to insufficient development of manufacturing strategy, and manufacturing strategy integration may be a critical prerequisite to environmental excellence.