Reengineering Work

ARTICLE ANALYSIS:

Hammer, M. (1990). Reengineering Work: Don’t Automate, Obliterate. Harvard Business

Review, July-August, pp. 104-112.

The title of the article is the main issue discussed throughout the whole paper. It is about reengineering a business. According to Hammer, reengineer businesses means “using the power of modern information technology to radically redesign our business processed in order to achieve dramatic improvements in their performance”. To improve performance, process rationalization and automation as the usual ways of doing in the 1990s could not meet companies’ needs of dramatic upgradings. Using information technology on obsolete business processes can not help, but companies should destroy them and start over.

The essence of reengineering is” discontinuous thinking of recognizing and breaking away from the outdated rules. With reengineering, managers need to break loose from old-fashioned business processes and create new ones. Furthermore, it is important to see the fundamental processes of the business from a cross-functional perspective. This is totally different from old days when they focused on specialization of labor and economies of scale. Tasks were narrowly defined and pointed at departments level, so maybe one task but all departments had to involve for nothing.

There are 7 principles of reengineering were discussed. Number 1: Organize around outcomes, not tasks. It means having one person perform all the steps in a process. So a person’s job should be designed around an objective or outcome in stead of a single task. Number 2: Have those who use the output of the process perform the process. Before, if each department does only one type of task and is really depends on other department in other things. Now, with computer-based data and expertise are more readily to use, departments, units or individuals can do more for themselves. Company can cut overhead costs with this principles. Also it helps process...