Abstract
Those aspiring to improve the way work is done must
begin to apply the capabilities of information
technology to redesign business processes. Business
process design and information technology are
natural partners, yet industrial engineers have
never fully exploited their relationship. The
authors argue, in fact, that it has barely been
exploited at all. But the organizations that have
used IT to redesign boundary-crossing,
customer-driven processes have benefited
enormously. This article explains why. At the turn
of the century, Frederick Taylor revolutionized the
workplace with his ideas on work organization, task
decomposition, and job measurement. Taylor’s basic
aim was to increase organizational productivity by
applying to human labor the same engineering
principles that had proven so successful in solving
the technical problems in the work environment. The
same approaches that had transformed mechanical
activity could also be used to structure jobs
performed by people. Taylor came to symbolize the
practical realizations in industry that we now call
industrial engineering (IE), or the scientific
school of management.1 In fact, though work design
remains a contemporary IE concern, no subsequent
concept or tool has rivaled the power of Taylor’s
mechanizing vision. As we enter the 1990s, however,
two newer tools are transforming organizations to
the degree that Taylorism once did. These are
information technology–the capabilities offered by
computers, software applications, and
telecommunications–and business process redesign–the
analysis and design of work flows and processes
within and between organizations. Working together,
these tools have the potential to create a new type
of industrial engineering, changing the way the
discipline is practiced and the skills necessary to
practice it.
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