【正文】 not just to information technology that provides the necessary tools for the transformation, but also to other technologies that are necessary to the processes. This is of some importance to the because its corporations tend to concentrate more on developing products than on processes {Mansfield, E., 1988}. Antitrust laws and concerns about cartels and monopolies have also prevented the corporations from cooperating with each other. This is a sore point with many American panies. They plain loudly about the extent to which their foreign petitors are able to get support from their governments or to pursue collaborations with petitors within their national boundaries, to jointly develop new technologies. At last, the government is waking up to this challenge. The perceived difficulty of acquiring semiconductor chip manufacturing equipment from Japan induced the lawmakers, who normally frown on corporations ing close to each other, cooperate in setting up an organization SEMETECH for manufacturing semiconductor processing equipment within the country {Randazzese,L., 1994}. Government intervention has grown further with the two major government Ramp。s strategies through the diamondstar (MitsubishiChrysler) collaboration and later, the successful Jeep operations of the newly acquired American Motors. Learning from these benchmarking experiments, Chrysler embarked on a creativedestruction process by instituting dramatic cultural changes that destroyed the functional silosbased vertical organization and creating a reengineered workplace. This workplace, centered around the four cross functional platform teams for large cars, small cars, mini vans and Jeep vehicles and trucks. The objective was further sharpened to address only the American market, a market that was lost to the Japanese and its US rivals, especially the Ford. The results of the reengineering efforts were beginning to show in 1992. In 37 months from design, Chrysler had in production the LH series of cars using the platform team organization. This was done with 740 people as opposed to 1400 previously for similar size cars. The engine development time for a liter option was reduced from 240 weeks to 187 weeks {Gardner, G., 1993, IMB, 1993}. Chrysler then embarked on a development of a pact car, Neon as a direct petition to the Japanese imports. Chrysler developed Neon on its own, without any foreign collaborator a first for an American car pany in the small car category. The car was in production in 31 months. It is reported that the next generation LH car would take only 24 months. In 1994, Chrysler was adjudged as the lowest cost producer of cars in the world.{Taylor, A., 1994}. Design and Production One of the corner stones of Chrysler39。Business Process Analysis A Letter from AmericaProfessor V. ArunachalamDistinguished Service Professor, Departments of Material Science and Engineering Robotics and Engineering Public Policy Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, PA, 15217 and Dr. Eswaran SubrahmanianSenior Research Scientist,Engineering Design Research Center Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, Pa, 15217 August, 1995 A report to Engineering and Scocial Science Research Council, UK To enable the reader to access this BPRC report speedily and flexibly, it has been organised into the following separate sections: Contents Page Abstract Introduction Reengineering Corporations and Reengineering The Chrysler Corporation Caterpillar Jet Propulsion Innovation in Defense: Hughes Aircraft Innovation in Technologies Government Initiatives Methods and Tools for BPA IT and BPR Japan and Reengineering Human Resources in BPR Problems in Reengineering A Few more lines References A report to Engineering and Scocial Science Research Council, UKSection 1: AbstractThis report is on the recent innovations implemented by American panies in the way they manage their business and by the US government in supporting the industrial and technological base in the country. American corporations visible to outsiders are generally very large, with annual budgets running well above the national budgets of many countries, and with a range of diverse operations transcending divisional, organisational and national barriers. In responding to changes in the global market place, they are continually introducing innovations in process and product technologies and in product development and manufacturing cycles. It is difficult to enumerate, let alone discuss, all the innovations that are seen in US business today. Instead, we shall focus on innovations that are significant and generic for improving business processes. This is relevant as more than fifty percent of US firms are medium or small sized, and the general petitiveness of US industry depends on them as well. In this report, we do not discuss the recent trends in financial, merger, ROD and marketing strategies and processes. Instead, we discuss only those issues related to business processes that impact the ability of US business to meet the identified market demands in cost, quality and time. A phrase, now increasingly in vogue, to describe the efforts in process improvements is Business Process Reengineering (BAR). Hammer and Champ define BAR as the radical rethinking of the business processes to achieve dramatic improvements in critical contemporary measures of performance as cost, quality and speed. This characterisation of reengineering is often interpreted in multiple ways resulting in different models and methods of implementation of business process reengineering. Reported failure rates of about forty to seventy percent for BAR applications in achieving stated goals can indeed be attributed to the differences in perceived definition of what constitutes reengineering and the level of implementation. In practice, implementations of reengineering span from reengineering local process to a plete res