The road to business process improvement--can you get there from here?

Historically, "improvements" within the organization have been frequently attained through automation by building and installing computer systems. Material requirements planning (MRP), manufacturing resource planning II (MRP II), just-in-time (JIT), computer aided design (CAD), computer aided manufacturing (CAM), electronic data interchange (EDI), and various other TLAs (three-letter acronyms) have been used as the methods to attain business objectives. But most companies have found that installing computer software, cleaning up their data, and providing every employee with training on how to best use the systems have not resulted in the level of business improvements needed. The software systems have simply made management around the problems easier but did little to solve the basic problems. The missing element in the efforts to improve the performance of the organization has been a shift in focus from individual department improvements to cross-organizational business process improvements. This article describes how the Electric Boat Division of General Dynamics Corporation, in conjunction with the Data Systems Division, moved its focus from one of vertical organizational processes to horizontal business processes. In other words, how we got rid of the dinosaurs.