It’s a solution optimised for its intended use. With engineering, this is usually a once-off process at the birth and design of the solution. After implementation or construction, it needs only to be maintained.
With businesses, we tend to engineer after conception. It’s because the intended purpose of the organisation is unclear. We do not understand all the factors that will affect this business over time. The solutions we design must be constantly reevaluated, updated and enhanced.
Process engineering creates the skeleton for this optimised solution. This skeleton must evolve and grow as the organisation does. With each revision the implied intelligence increases. The organisation becomes better at harnessing the additional tacit intelligence of the employees.
This is the essence of a learning organisation. It cannot take place without the revision of the business process.
A once of solution implies a complete understanding of the function of the organisation and that this function is fulfilled in an unchanging environment.
I bet that’s not the case.
