【正文】 siness processes that are now underway in the country. It is intervening actively by providing initiatives and inducements to all firms for continuing education and retraining programs. The US govemment is also intervening actively in an innovative fashion to fill the gaps seen in US panies, specially in processing and manufacturing stages. These are considered essential to keep American products globally petitive. The US federal and university laboratories, large and successful as they are, have been singularly ineffective in transferring these technologies to US industries. Existing laws in place and concerns about patent rights and public knowledge have discouraged close collaboration between the laboratories and industries. The US government has introduced multiagency (Defense, Commerce, NASA, NSF and ARPA, and Transportation) programs in defense, dualuse and civilian sectors supporting short term programs of research in high risk, high value manufacturing process technologies. The major condition of support of such programs is that the program should be mercially relevant to industry and jointly pursued by laboratories and industries, with leadership and matching financial contributions from industry. In this report, we discusses these initiatives, known as ATP (Advanced Technology Program) and TRP (Technology Reinvestment Program) and their performance to date. The success of Japanese firms in capturing a significant part of the US automobile market in the 7039。s and 8039。s and their ability to adapt to changing economic conditions, without undue changes in unemployment, triggered the rethinking of the nature of business operations in American industry. A serious search for new models of business began with the scrutiny of Japanese automobile industry by US panies and business theorists. This involved studies on process innovations, quality management and lean production technologies as practiced by the Japanese. Meanwhile, Japanese firms are introducing information technology in their work practices that not only preserves much of their organizational and cultural advantages but also incorporates a few US innovations. In this sense both are learning from each other. The definition of Business Process Analysis is continually changing. It is, in the economic jargon, both macro and micro: details of every process matter as also the overall organizational objectives. Technology is not the only driving force for re engineering. Economic and cultural practices are relevant as well. Knowledge generated by individual panies and business theorists and the experience gained by its application will be the BPR tools and methods for tomorrow. Even with a limited repertoire of techniques and relative inexperience in applying them to business practices, BPR, currently, is proving to be powerful approach for organizations wanting to be petitive.Section 2: IntroductionThe United States of America is branded as a Superpower when it es to military strength, but the context can indeed be wider. In practically all areas of human endeavor it stands on top: it has the largest GNP, biggest industrial and manufacturing base and an impressive, efficient and enviable scientific and technological infrastructure. Its output in as traditional an area as agriculture or in as modern a field as information technology is prodigious. It is not only a granary for the world but also a demonstration and proving ground for harnessing new technologies or innovations for creating wealth or improving the quality of life. Among the world’s 500 largest corporations, the magazine Fortune lists 151 as American owned, larger than any other country. In 1994 alone, these corporations earned a profit of more than $ 140 billion, a record among other petitors. As impressive as this is, it was actually better, especially after the Second World War and in the 1950s and 60s. Since then, this lead has eroded away in some key manufacturing industries such as iron and steel, automobiles and consumer electronics. Meanwhile, the deficit in trade balance in these areas between total value of exports and the total value of imports by the US has actually increased. Since the seventies, more areas have been lost to petition。 many new countries, considered in the past as less advanced, are emerging as strong petitors. Formerly, the US tended to ignore these challenges and attributed the petitiveness of other countries, most notably of Japan, to their low wages, homogeneity of population, authoritarian culture, workethic and low technology contents. It also rationalized the loss by arguing that as the world’s largest technological power, it was forever looking for new manufacturing opportunities relegating less technology intensive or laborintensive manufacturing to other countries. However, the danger signs were visible in many areas. The automobile industry was, and still is, very special to the US. In addition to providing mobility to millions of Americans and linking this vast country, it remains the core of American manufacturing and also the crucible for manufacturing and managerial innovations. The moving assembly line and management practices empowering and integrating manufacturing centers with customers and suppliers are all the consequences of automobile manufacture. But when this industry was overtaken by foreign petitors with their delivery of affordable and reliable cars of higher quality on time, concerns were voiced about the productivity and petitiveness of US manufacturing and demands were made for urgent remedial steps. A major study on industrial productivity in 1986 by a distinguished group of sixteen experts, including a Nobel laureate economist from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology {Berger,B., . 1989}, detailed the weaknesses prevalent in US industries, not just in macroeconomics terms, but in terms of the customer satisfaction, quality of products, efficiency of production, speed of manufac