Not long ago, continuity and stability were the watchwords of corporate operations. Now, with companies facing ever more demanding customers and tougher competition, ongoing operational performance improvement has become a strategic imperative. Executives are constantly trying to wring improved performance from their operations by following yellow-brick roads marked ERP Implementation, Balanced Scorecard, Supply-Chain Integration — or with the names of any of a dozen other popular programs, including today’s favorite, Six Sigma.
But although each of these performance-improvement initiatives can boost operating results, they need to be positioned under a process-management umbrella if they are to be successfully integrated. Otherwise, companies face the risk of program proliferation, of being burdened with a multitude of disconnected improvement efforts. Program proliferation is dangerous: It dissipates resources and creates confusion as people try to understand how each effort relates to the others. It engenders harmful competition among specialists, with each group promoting its program as the most deserving of resources. It also fosters cynicism; employees believe (correctly) that management cannot be serious about so many programs and hence think the company is serious about none.
Companies such as Bombardier, Air Products and Chemicals, Johnson & Johnson and Merck & Co. are avoiding the dangers of program proliferation by integrating their performance-improvement initiatives under the banner of process management. In so doing, they ensure that these efforts complement rather than... To read the complete article, login or sign-up using the form below.
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