Post-industrial manufacturing: goodbye to the old dividing line between manufacturing and services.(Survey: Manufacturing)(Brief Article)

Economist (US), The, June, 1998

THE old definitions of manufacturing are no longer worth much. One dictionary calls it ''the making of an article by physical labour or machinery''. The 1987 Standard Industrial Classification manual in the United States says a factory is ''an establishment engaged in the mechanical or chemical transformation of materials into new products''. Now go and stand in a queue at a McDonald's takeaway. Observe what goes on behind the counter. Grills cook raw discs of minced beef. Some workers are tending the grills; others are loading potato chips into vats of hot fat; yet others are taking orders, packing the output of their colleagues into cardboard cartons, adding whatever extras the customer calls for. Would you call this a service activity-or the distributed manufacture of...

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