Information technology mediated Business Process Management - lessons from the supply chain
TL;DR: In this article, the authors study the experiences of practitioners of "Supply Chain Management" (SCM) and suggest that the adoption of a Business Process Management (BPM) approach, combined with the use of existing information processing techniques to interrogate and surround the legacy systems may prove to be the most acceptable solution to the legacy system problem.
Abstract: For most of the twentieth century, organisations in both the private and public sectors have adopted a functional structure, segmenting their work practices and decision processes into discrete compartments in the form of departments, divisions or groups. Not surprisingly, the information-processing infrastructure, which has been developed to support these functions, is typically composed of applications subsystems, which may be reasonably efficient in themselves but are frequently difficult to link together. Today, this legacy of discrete applications systems poses a challenge to any organisation trying to adopt a more integrated approach to its decision-making processes. Management thinking has highlighted the deficiencies of the traditional highly specialist structures, and offered alternative paradigms and models, but the practical guidance which has been offered concerning the replacement of legacy systems has been sometimes contradictory and appears to have been at best ineffective and at worst damaging to the companies adopting it. In order to gain further insight into this issue, it is appropriate to study the experiences of practitioners of "Supply Chain Management" (SCM). Having abandoned a traditionalist and functionally orientated approach to "Distribution and Warehouse Management", many companies have now taken a systems based view of their physical distribution networks. Seeing "Logistics" as a networked mega-function has led to significant performance improvements, without the need for major information systems replacement. Furthermore, a few practitioners have now gone even further and have adopted a consciously process oriented approach to logistics, following a "Supply Chain Management" approach. There is emerging evidence that this can lead to further significant improvements in performance, once again without recourse to wholesale revision of information systems. The case of Xerox's "Customer Supply Assurance Managers" (CSAMs) provides grounds for optimism. There is at least initial evidence that radically different business processes can be introduced into a well-established company without the delays and dangers associated with major disruption to its legacy systems. Indeed, it is possible that the adoption of a Business Process Management (BPM) approach, combined with the use of existing information processing techniques to interrogate and surround the legacy systems may prove to be the most acceptable solution to the legacy systems problem. The underlying but emerging lesson would appear to be that for many organisations the key to greater effectiveness may be producing better informed people, empowered to make wider ranging decisions, rather than producing technically more sophisticated information systems.
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TL;DR: The findings strongly support the idea of joint deployment of information system infrastructure and process improvement to streamline cycle time performance in a supply chain.
Abstract: An empirical study of 57 top‐tier suppliers to the North American automotive industry examined the direct and complementary effects of information system infrastructure (ISI) and process improvements on time‐based performance. The results show that the three dimensions of ISI – design‐manufacturing integration (DMI), manufacturing technology (MT), and information technology (IT) – directly influenced at least one dimension of time‐based performance. For example, DMI influenced manufacturing lead time, MT influenced new product development time, and IT influenced customer responsiveness. Process improvement also directly influenced supply‐chain time performance. Finally, ISI and process improvement had a positive and complementary effect on time‐based performance. Specifically, the IT factor along with process improvement variables (standardization and concurrent engineering) had a complementary and significant positive influence on time‐based performance. The findings strongly support the idea of joint deployment of information system infrastructure and process improvement to streamline cycle time performance in a supply chain.
159 citations
TL;DR: The results of a major international survey into the relationship between corporate strategy, supply chain strategy and supply chain performance management are reported and there is evidence of inconsistency in the way many businesses relate their supply chain, corporate, and investment strategy.
Abstract: The results of a major international survey into the relationship between corporate strategy, supply chain strategy and supply chain performance management are reported. Five clearly defined groups are identified: Supply Chain Leaders, Strong and Weak Players, Lagging Players and Non-players. Those business units that report a close link between their supply chain strategy and their supply chain technology, in comparison with those that report a weaker link, displayed a consistent set of characteristics. They rate supply chain strategy as more important for corporate strategy. They have a relatively sophisticated definition of their supply chain strategy. They think their supply chain is more important in achieving competitive advantage, they have invested more in supply chain infrastructure and IT support and they have more formal means of assessing their supply chain performance. There is evidence of inconsistency in the way many businesses relate their supply chain, corporate, and investment strategy.
137 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors study the impact of supply chain management on overall organizational effectiveness and identify problems that affect the success of such a management process, concluding that organizations generally considered themselves successful at managing their supply chains.
Abstract: SUMMARY
Supply chain management seeks to enhance competitive performance by closely integrating the internal functions within a company and effectively linking them with the external operations of suppliers and channel members. This study was undertaken to study the impact of supply chain management on overall organizational effectiveness and to identify problems that affect supply chain management success. The results show that organizations generally considered themselves successful at managing their supply chains. However, while they have achieved significant improvement in organizational performance, they have not reached the order of magnitude of improvements ascribed to supply chain management.
113 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors proposed a hybrid approach that incorporates simulation, Taguchi techniques, and response surface methodology to examine the interactions among the factors, and to search for the combination of factor levels throughout the supply chain to achieve the optimal performance.
Abstract: Managing a supply chain to meet an organization's objectives is a challenge to many firms. It involves collaboration in multiple dimensions, such as cooperation, information sharing, and capacity planning. In this research, we focus on identifying the ‘best’ operating conditions for a supply chain. We propose a hybrid approach that incorporates simulation, Taguchi techniques, and response surface methodology to examine the interactions among the factors, and to search for the combination of factor levels throughout the supply chain to achieve the ‘optimal’ performance. This study makes it possible for firms to understand the dynamic relations among various factors, and provides guidelines for management to minimize the impact of demand uncertainty on the performance of the supply chain. The results help the manufacturer determine the proper plant capacity and adopt the right level of delayed differentiation strategy for its products. We also quantify the potential gains of cooperation among different memb...
99 citations
Cites background from "Information technology mediated Bus..."
...Others emphasize the role of information technology in the SC (Mason-Jones and Towill 1997, 1998, Strader et al. 1999, Hewitt 1999 and Clay and Seymour 1999)....
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TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present evidence from an empirical study involving 281 Australian organizations that the availability, open nature, and (comparative) ease of implementation of Internet technologies for integration with trading partners, whilst on the one hand providing the means by which organizations can integrate processes and systems in a cost effective way, can amplify the need for both structural change and closer collaboration with trading partner.
76 citations
Cites background from "Information technology mediated Bus..."
...Coupled with this requirement to link systems and ensure quality of data when using Internet technologies is the need to reengineer processes (Berry and Naim, 1996; Berry et al., 1995; Hewitt, 1999; Mohanty and Deshmukh, 2000; Ruetterer and Kotzab, 2000), or even to develop new structures and business models (BCG, 2001; Bruce et al....
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...The requirement for organizations to re-design processes as a consequence of implementing information technology based solutions is a prominent theme in the supply chain management and business to business e-commerce literature (Hewitt, 1999; Mabert and Venkataramanan, 1998; McCormack, 1999; Raymond and Bergeron, 1996; Ruetterer and Kotzab, 2000)....
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References
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TL;DR: Senge's Fifth Discipline is a set of principles for building a "learning organization" as discussed by the authors, where people expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nutured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are contually learning together.
Abstract: Peter Senge, founder and director of the Society for Organisational Learning and senior lecturer at MIT, has found the means of creating a 'learning organisation'. In The Fifth Discipline, he draws the blueprints for an organisation where people expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nutured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are contually learning together. The Fifth Discipline fuses these features together into a coherent body of theory and practice, making the whole of an organisation more effective than the sum of its parts. Mastering the disciplines will: *Reignite the spark of learning, driven by people focused on what truly matters to them. *Bridge teamwork into macro-creativity. *Free you from confining assumptions and mind-sets. *Teach you to see the forest and the trees. *End the struggle between work and family time. The Fifth Discipline is a remarkable book that draws on science, spiritual values, psychology, the cutting edge of management thought and Senge's work with leading companies which employ Fifth Discipline methods. Reading it provides a searching personal experience and a dramatic professional shift of mind. This edition contains more than 100 pages of new material about how companies are actually using and benefiting from Fifth Discipline practices, as well as a new foreword from Peter Senge about his work with the Fifth Discipline over the last 15 years.
16,386 citations
Book•
01 Jan 1981
TL;DR: The Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) as discussed by the authors is an alternative approach which enables managers of all kinds and at any level to deal with the subtleties and confusions of the situations they face.
Abstract: Whether by design, accident or merely synchronicity, Checkland appears to have developed a habit of writing seminal publications near the start of each decade which establish the basis and framework for systems methodology research for that decade."" Hamish Rennie, Journal of the Operational Research Society, 1992 Thirty years ago Peter Checkland set out to test whether the Systems Engineering (SE) approach, highly successful in technical problems, could be used by managers coping with the unfolding complexities of organizational life. The straightforward transfer of SE to the broader situations of management was not possible, but by insisting on a combination of systems thinking strongly linked to real-world practice Checkland and his collaborators developed an alternative approach - Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) - which enables managers of all kinds and at any level to deal with the subtleties and confusions of the situations they face. This work established the now accepted distinction between hard systems thinking, in which parts of the world are taken to be systems which can be engineered, and soft systems thinking in which the focus is on making sure the process of inquiry into real-world complexity is itself a system for learning. Systems Thinking, Systems Practice (1981) and Soft Systems Methodology in Action (1990) together with an earlier paper Towards a Systems-based Methodology for Real-World Problem Solving (1972) have long been recognized as classics in the field. Now Peter Checkland has looked back over the three decades of SSM development, brought the account of it up to date, and reflected on the whole evolutionary process which has produced a mature SSM. SSM: A 30-Year Retrospective, here included with Systems Thinking, Systems Practice closes a chapter on what is undoubtedly the most significant single research programme on the use of systems ideas in problem solving. Now retired from full-time university work, Peter Checkland continues his research as a Leverhulme Emeritus Fellow. "
7,467 citations
Book•
01 Jan 1911
TL;DR: The Taylor System as discussed by the authors was developed as a system for increasing productivity in industry, and its principles have been applied to all kinds of large-scale enterprises, including operations with departments and agencies of the federal government.
Abstract: This brief essay by the founder of scientific management has served for nearly a century as a primer for administrators and for students of managerial techniques. Although scientific management was developed primarily as a system for increasing productivity in industry, its principles have been applied to all kinds of large-scale enterprises, including operations with departments and agencies of the federal government. It is in this volume that Frederick Winslow Taylor gave the theory of scientific management its clearest airing. Born in 1856, Taylor began work at age eighteen as an apprentice to a pattern-maker and as a machinist. A few years later he joined the Midvale Steel Company as a laborer, and in eight years rose to chief engineer. During this time he developed and tested what he called the "task system," which became known as the Taylor System and eventually as scientific management. He made careful experiments to determine the best way of performing each operation and the amount of time it required, analyzing the materials, tools, and work sequence, and establishing a clear division of labor between management and workers. His experiments laid the groundwork for the principles that are expounded in this essay, which was first published in 1911.
5,361 citations
Book•
01 Oct 1992
TL;DR: In this article, Davenport provides numerous examples of firms that have succeeded or failed in combining business change and technology initiatives and highlights the roles of new organizational structures and human resource programs in developing process innovation.
Abstract: The business environment of the 1990s demands significant changes in the way we do business. Simply formulating strategy is no longer sufficient; we must also design the processes to implement it effectively. The key to change is process innovation, a revolutionary new approach that fuses information technology and human resource management to improve business performance. The cornerstone to process innovation's dramatic results is information technology--a largely untapped resource, but a crucial "enabler" of process innovation. In turn, only a challenge like process innovation affords maximum use of information technology's potential. Davenport provides numerous examples of firms that have succeeded or failed in combining business change and technology initiatives. He also highlights the roles of new organizational structures and human resource programs in developing process innovation. Process innovation is quickly becoming the byword for industries ready to pull their companies out of modest growth patterns and compete effectively in the world marketplace.
4,474 citations
Book•
01 Jan 1990TL;DR: The Emergence of Soft Systems Thinking as discussed by the authors is a seminal work in the field of soft systems thinking, and it can be found in the Soft Systems Methodology--the Parts.
Abstract: The Emergence of Soft Systems Thinking. Soft Systems Methodology--the Whole. Soft Systems Methodology--the Parts. Soft Systems Methodology--the Whole Revisited. Soft Systems Methodology--the Context. Conclusion. Appendix. Bibliography. Indexes.
3,531 citations