【正文】 s development cycles, Mitsubishi39。s and 8039。D organizations, National Institute of standards and technology (NIST) and Advanced Research Project Agency (ARPA, formerly DARPA) contracting research and development programs on manufacturing technologies. A major condition for this support is that these programs be jointly pursued by research organizations and US panies with the panies playing the major role. Even though this initiative may not fit into the structure of reengineering as is perceived today, we believe this collaboration will have profound impact on the future strategies of US corporations during restructuring. In effect, . Companies will have the added bonus of choosing from new sets of process technologies. We shall report on some instances of the initiatives taken by the government in this effort. Human Resources The role of human operators is radically altered in reengineering. Instead of specialized skills, a broad range of petence is called for. A keyword in reengineering is flexibility, and this applies to humans as well. Functionally based vertical hierarchies are replaced by horizontal structures where the positionbased power is replaced by participationbased authority. This shift provides the scope for extensive delegation of power and responsibility in reengineering。s new reengineered corporation. The layout and architecture of the Center39。 servicing contributes a major ponent to the GDP and to employment generation. In 1991, 76 percent of output came from services, and the value it added to the economy is about 70 percent. It also contributes some key elements to manufacturing: vendors and customers are served by this industry. We shall therefore include some examples of reengineering efforts in this area that have turned out to be successful. Because of the very scope and size of the efforts demanded by reengineering, the examples are still very few, though there are numerous instances of panies reengineering a process or two, no doubt hoping that the visible success of the efforts would make reengineering more palatable. The Role of Technology Reengineering does not claim to substitute for either a sound business strategy, product or technology. It is only a mechanism for radically improving the performance of the business processes for the vendors, customers and products. But by centering the whole concept on processes, reengineering is inextricably linked to technologies。 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 manufacture and introduction of new products and costs. This study of 200 panies was the first to identify these gaps in the US system and traced their origin to the age of mass production, antitrust laws, use of workers as mere skilled operators, overemphasis on products rather than on processes and to an environment that has long ceased to exist. This group found these strategies to be outdated in the face of increased global trading, emergence of new technologies and their speedy assimilation by many countries and the growth of sophistication among consumers. Thanks to new technologies, manufacturing and process technologies were making production more flexible, streamlined and efficient bringing in a quality previously thought as unachievable and at a speed considered unattainable. The workforce was no longer a collection of skilled individuals but groups with petence transcending many areas of manufacturing, and motivated by teamspirit, delegated power and vested authority. All these, according to this study, were missing in the American industrial and manufacturing scene. Even in the 1960s, the management guru, Peter Drucker{1969}, in a deeply perceptive book, The Age of Discontinuity, lamented the lack of any change in the structure of industrial organizations in step with the impressive growth of economy and technologies. Small midcourse corrections were introduced in the well established but outdated structures to provide continuity when radical reforms and pathbreaking restructuring were in order. This report discusses one major business process innovation that is now sweeping the United States consuming the traditional, but increasingly inefficient, ways of doing business. Reengineering has been the banner of this change in business practices. This innovation is