Crandalls author 2nd edition of book on business trends

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In the second edition of their book, Dr. William “Rick” Crandall and his father, Dr. Richard E. Crandall present new case studies to support their thesis of the fusion of global manufacturing and service industry business strategies.

“Vanishing Boundaries: How Integrating Manufacturing and Services Creates Customer Value,” was published in late 2013 by CRC Press. Rick Crandall teaches in the School of Business at UNC Pembroke. His father Richard Crandall teaches in the Walker College of Business at Appalachian State University.

“Vanishing Boundaries” is an in-depth technical analysis of how two types of business entities - service and manufacturing - are looking more and more alike, said Dr. Rick Crandall, who teaches management in UNCP’s School of Business. The UNCP professor calls it “product and service cohesion.”

“We were very pleased that our publishers asked for a second edition,” Dr. Crandall said. “We have included new case studies on GE, Hewlett Packard, Amazon and UPS, and incorporated new trends in global business.”

The second edition also got a new name. The publisher agreed with the authors that “Vanishing Boundaries” was a more appropriate title. The first edition, published in 2008, was titled “New Methods of Competing in the Global Marketplace.”

The Crandalls also co-authored a textbook “Principles of Supply Chain Management,” published in 2009. They are currently in the final phases of completing the 2nd edition on that book.  Like the title of their new book, the father and son are a merger of different business backgrounds.

“My father has a manufacturing background and I worked in the hospitality industry, so we wrote from different perspectives about what is driving both businesses today,” Dr. Crandall said. “There are very few manufacturing-only companies today; to be really good and efficient, manufacturers must work with customers after the product is delivered and provide high levels of service.  In the prior years, manufacturers would make products and push them out to the market with very little after-sale service.  Today, that is just not feasible; manufacturers have to be service oriented.”

“Likewise, service companies are using efficiencies developed by manufacturers to increase productivity and reduce waste,” he said.  Concepts like lean production and Six Sigma are finding their ways into service entities.  “One industry to watch for these type of changes is healthcare,” Crandall said. “The industry is ripe for becoming more efficient and quality oriented.  It will be exciting to see how this pans out in the future.”

Dr. Crandall said “Vanishing Boundaries” is for serious audiences. At 540 pages, “it is not meant to be an easy read; it is quite technical,” Dr. Crandall said. “This is not a textbook but a topic book geared to managers, although graduate students would benefit too,” Dr. Crandall said.

The new edition addresses the push for efficiencies in health care, corporate sustainability and advances in information technology such as cloud computing. As global business continues to change, the new edition speaks to new trends, such as “re-shoring” of industry back to the U.S. and the manufacturing revolution brought on by 3D printing technology.

“Three-D manufacturing is also called additive manufacturing because typically manufacturing has been subtractive, starting with raw materials,” Dr. Crandall said. “It’s going to be exciting to see where it will go.”

Changes in manufacturing have also resulted in changes to the workforce that manage and run the highly automated factories of the future.  Such workforces will need to be highly educated and statistically competent.   Such audiences will find “Vanishing Boundaries” an important read.