Emergence of a new industrial paradigm: ICT supported customer service

Abstract

A continual stream of new concepts emerged to assist in industrial progress as measured by reduced time and cost. This could be clearly seen in stable mass-production industries where repetition and continuity could be presumed. While a car company is not a closed system, the doorway to its processes have been so notoriously narrow that management could control inputs and outputs. High environmental changes rates could be kept at bay but forces of instability eventually found their way into these sanctuaries. This has resulted in contradictory demands and a need for radical change. This happened alongside the emergence of ICT (Information and Communications Technologies) and growth in services. Understanding ICT and services, their interconnections, and their twin impact on most industries seems critical to discussing technological edges and their movement. A new form of customer has emerged. They have brought the conditions of changing environments into the traditionally protected settings. Product providers have teamed to fill the spaces around their tangible entities with services, although current definitions of services are woefully inadequate to the challenges of that label. Services are replacing goods as the leading edge of technological change in a number of industries. The shift is traumatic. The platform offered by loosely connected services and semi-autonomous customers, all connected by communications systems, now sets the agenda for even more radical technological development. We track this increasingly profound change process via continued development of ICT.