The rapidity of technological evolution, in combination with rising customer expectations, has
created global competitive pressures on costs and quality. These pressures have stimulated an exploration
of cross-functional processes—to identify and understand them and to improve their performance.
There is now much evidence that within the total product cycle a major problem of poor
process performance lies with process management technologies. Functional objectives frequently
conflict with customer needs, served as they must be by cross-functional processes. Further, the
processes generate a variety of waste (missed deadlines, factory scrap, etc.). It is not difficult to identify
products, such as invoice generation, preparation of an insurance policy, or paying a claim, that
take over 20 days to accomplish less than 20 min of actual work. They are also not easily changed
in response to the continuously changing environment. To better serve customer needs there is a need
to restore these processes to effectiveness, efficiency, and adaptability.