Reengineering and continuous improvement

Abstract

The last two decades of the twentieth century have brought unprecedented change to the business and governmental landscape. Globalization, deregulation and privatization have fundamentally changed the competitive environment. Rapid advances in electronic and information technology and their penetration into consumer markets are driving ever-faster product cycles and improving price/performance expectations. Many businesses have found it difficult to compete in this rapidly changing environment. New competitors, unfettered by the established ways, seemingly arise overnight to threaten larger, long-established institutions — whose traditional processes and systems are too slow, inflexible and costly. Within the span of a few years, the fortunes of powerful businesses such as Ford and IBM and even younger companies such as Digital Equipment Corporation, changed from earning hundreds of millions or billions of dollars a year in profits to equally large losses.