Question: Cutting up craft skills

Consider a service such as a surgical operation. Do you think that routine surgery could be carried out by more scientifically managed methods where, for example, the person that performs the operation is not a qualified surgeon, but is trained to carry out a single procedure? It is important to note that in the service sector ‘interaction' (how much the customer can intervene in the process) is not the same as ‘contact time'. A lecture to a large number of students is high in ‘contact' but comparatively low in ‘interaction': so high duration of contact does not always mean a more interactive service. ‘Customisation' reflects the degree to which the service provided is tailored to the needs of the customer. Organisations which have a high degree of both interaction and customisation are categorised as professional services, e.g. legal practices. Conversely, organisations which have a low degree of both interaction and customisation are categorised as mass services, e.g. schools.

The purpose of such classification of systems is to allow operations managers to decide how systems should be set up to deliver the type of process required. These classifications exist as a continuum. Using education as an example, most state schools would be positioned near the bottom right-hand corner of the matrix. However a fee-paying school could be positioned more to the top-left due to its lower class sizes, greater provision of support staff and additional extra-curricular activities. Another example would be a specialist clinic dealing with rare and difficult to diagnose and treat conditions, which may operate as a professional service while a hospital that deals with standard operations such as cataracts or hip replacements may be set up more as a service shop. The type of service operation is therefore less about what the service is and more about how it might be provided.