Book Reviews

Reengineering the Corporation:
A Manifesto for Business Revolution

By Michael Hammer and James Champy

Reviewed by Steve Buchwald, CIRM

APICS is certainly an organization that listens to its members. Due to popular demand, APICS has made available the best seller "Reengineering the Corporation: A Manifesto for Business Revolution" by Michael Hammer and James Champy. This book can be ordered through the toll free number 1-800-444-2742 for $23.00 if you are an APICS member. The Stock # is 03250.

"A set of principles laid down more than two centuries ago has shaped the structure, management, and performance of American business throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.... American managers and the companies they ran set the performance standard for the rest of the business world. Sadly, that is no longer the case." So write Hammer and Champy in the Introduction. The go on to say that corporations must adopt a new set of principles or be forced to close their doors and go out of business. However, if you think simple changes with their incremental improvement of 10% or 20% is business reengineering then you are in need of this book. Hammer and Champy call on their first hand experience to show how by starting from scratch, not by fixing anything, some of the leading corporations in the world have saved hundreds of millions of dollars and have enjoyed order of magnitude increases in customer service and operational efficiency.

Although this book is full of stories and presents a guideline for initiating, conducting, and following through on the reengineering process, it is not a recipe book for successful reengineering (one needs to apply these concepts to their own individual company in a way that is correct for their particular environment). It is however, a book "about ideas [the authors] believe are as important to business today as Adam's Smith's ideas were to the entrepreneurs and managers of the last two centuries."

The book is laid out in a easy to follow format. Chapter one "The Crisis That Will Not Go Away" gives the argument for why we need to reengineer. Chapters two through five define reengineering. Chapters six through nine discusses "Who Will Reengineer?", with the obvious answer people, and how to find reengineering opportunities and how to exploit them. Chapters ten through thirteen are actual stories from four different companies that have used reengineering techniques. Chapter fourteen is a list of common pitfalls that can plague a well conceived reengineering effort.

If you want to gain a brand-new vision for succeeding in business today you will certainly want to read this book. Good reading!