Q Book Club

Reengineering Work: Don’t Automate, Obliterate

by Michael Hammer

Business Process Reengineering

Despite many years of restructuring and downsizing through process rationalization and automation, US companies have not obtained the improvements that she needed. This can be attributed to companies leaving the existing processes intact and using computers simply to speed them up! But speeding up those processes cannot address their fundamental performance deficiencies. Many of the job designs, work flows, control mechanisms, and organizational structures came of age in a different competitive environment and before the advent of the computer. Instead of computerizing outdated processes, we should “reengineer” the business processes, that is, to use the power of the computer to radically redesign the business the processes. Only through such a radical approach can companies achieve great improvement in their performances.

The process of “reengineering” involves the breaking of old, traditional ways of doing business and finding new and innovative ways. And from the redesigned processes, new rules will emerge that will determine how the processes will operate. The reengineering process is an all-or-nothing proposition, the results of which are often unknown until the completion of its course. Continue reading →