Michael Hammer (1948-2008) was a professor of computer science at MIT when he came up with the biggest business idea of the 1990s—re-engineering (see )—which he defined as “the fundamental rethinking and radical redesign of business processes to achieve dramatic improvements in critical measures of performance”. The terms process improvement, process excellence and process innovation all came from him. The idea, first propounded in an article in Harvard Business Review, was later expanded into a book that Hammer wrote with James Champy, the founder of CSC Index, a consulting firm. The book sold several million copies.

So popular was re-engineering that one survey in the 1990s showed it to have been adopted by almost 80% of Fortune 500 companies. It was often blamed for the widespread lay-offs that became part of almost every company's radical redesign at that time. Veeam Keygenguru on this page.

Read Reengineering the Corporation by Michael Hammer and James Champy by Michael Hammer, James Champy for free with a.

Related items • Feb 16th 2009 • Feb 13th 2009 • Feb 6th 2009 • Jan 30th 2009 Hammer, whose writing can be surprisingly vivid, once wrote: “A company that does not focus resolutely on its customers and the processes that produce value for its customers is not long for this world.” Process improvements come from “walking in the customer's shoes”, finding out what it is that customers really want, and then designing processes to meet that demand. By 1997 Hammer had taken the view that: “Processes are the key organisational theme for companies in the 21st century. Excellence in processes is what is going to distinguish successful organisations from the also-rans.” He added, mindful of the main beneficiaries of most novel business ideas: “Capability at helping companies to achieve process excellence is what's going to distinguish leading consulting companies from those sweeping up after the elephants.”.

When accessible data is combined with easy-to-use analysis and modelling tools, frontline workers—when properly trained—suddenly have sophisticated decision-making capabilities. Decisions can be made more quickly and problems resolved as soon as they crop up. Hammer never managed to repeat his success. He opened his own management-education firm, Hammer and Company, and worked on the idea of “the process enterprise”. If you really want to make re-engineering successful, he argued, you need a whole new type of organisation.

In 2004 he published a paper, “The invention and deployment of new ways of doing work”, on operational innovation. In this he pointed out that many companies—from Dell to Toyota to Southwest Airlines—have flourished not because of what they do but because of how they do it. They simply “out-operate” their rivals. Hammer went on to say that operational innovation, which “may appear unglamorous or unfamiliar to many executives is the only lasting basis for superior performance”. A bold claim, indeed, since phenomena such as Apple and Google continue to thrive because of their innovative products and services. Notable publications “Re-engineering Work: Don't Automate, Obliterate”, Harvard Business Review, July–August 1990 With Champy, J., “Reengineering the Corporation: A Manifesto for Business Revolution”, HarperBusiness, New York, 1993; revised updated edn, HarperCollins, 2004 “Deep Change: How Operational Innovation Can Transform Your Company”, Harvard Business Review, April 2004.

'America's business problem is that it is entering the twenty-first century with companies designed during the nineteenth century.' So write Michael Hammer and James Champy in this pioneering book on the most important topic in business circles today: reengineering - the radical redesign of a company's processes, organization, and culture. Reengineering the Corporation offers nothing less than a brand-new vision of how companies should be organized and managed if they are to succeed - indeed even survive - in the 1990s and beyond. Reengineering does not seek to make businesses better through incremental improvements - 10 percent faster here or 20 percent less expensive there. The aim of reengineering is a quantum leap in performance - the 100 percent or even tenfold improvements that can follow from entirely new work processes and structures.

Building on their firsthand experiences, Hammer and Champy show how some of the world's premier corporations use the principles of reengineering to save hundreds of millions of dollars a year, to achieve unprecedented levels of customer satisfaction, and to speed up and make more flexible all aspects of their operations. The key to reengineering is abandoning the most basic notions on which the modern organization is founded. Today's workers and managers are prisoners of antiquated theories about organizing work - theories that date back to the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution. These ideas - the division of labor, the need for elaborate controls, the managerial hierarchy - no longer work in a world of global competition and unrelenting change. In their stead, the authors introduce the notion of process orientation, of concentrating on and rethinking end-to-end activities that create value for customers. This book is about more than ideas, however. From their work with leading companies around the world, Hammer and Champy have learned how to make reengineering succeed.

They lay out the approaches that have enabled such companies as Bell Atlantic, Taco Bell, and Hallmark Cards to reinvent themselves. They offer a vision of the reengineered corporation and a road map for companies to follow in getting there.