Rating: 
Summary: A great update of a much maligned book
Review: What ever your feelings on reengineering (dramatic process improvement or excuse for downsizing payroll) Hammer and Champy reinvigorate the topic for the new millenium in this clear revision. Learning from their mistakes (they move process to the front instead of radical in their four word description), they reintroduce the goal of making major gains in reducing wasted work and time. Their case studies read as a list of comeback stars in corporate America and show that great strides can be made and do pay off. Just as Six Sigma is trying to reengineer TQM for a new economic reality, this book once again brings process improvement to the forefront of business management conciousness.
Rating:
Summary: A management classic
Review: What if you started your company from a blank slate with serving the customer as the end goal?This question is at the heart of Re-engineering the Corporation, a book that started a wave of corporate restructuring. At it's heart, the book offers the reader tools for staggering leaps of improvement (Cut cycle time from a week to 2 hours) by focusing on processes instead of internal organizations. Instead of asking, "How do we improve what we do?" the reader is challenged to ask, "What is absolutely required to serve the customer?" The book is broken up in sections of theory followed by case studies where re-engineering did meet the lofty goals. There is an evangelical zeal with the book. By nature of it being a manifesto for revolution, the authors are out to inspire in addition to educate. It isn't enough that you understand reengineering, you must go out and do it. The main criticism of the book comes from the authors own admission that two thirds of reengineering projects fail. If that's the case, does it pay out to begin a project like this? Or are more modest goals really appropriate? How does one avoid a major failure? The length of the book (in the spirit of the content, the book is very concise!) doesn't permit the authors to answer these questions. It's up to the individual manager to best decide how to apply the lessons in the real world.
Rating:
Summary: Clearly define what is reengineering
Review: What is 'Reengineering'? Down-sizing? No! Restructuring? No! Reengineering is the fundamental rethinking and radical redesign of business processes to achieve dramatic improvements in critical, contemporary measures of performaces, such as cost, quality, service, and speed (Page 46). I highly recommended this book to those who are interested in reengineer the corporate.
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