American engineer and author
Michael Martin Hammer (April 13, 1948 – Sept 3, 2008) was born in Annapolis, Maryland. Hammer was a Jewish-American engineer, management author, and a former professor of computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Hammer and James A. Champy founded the management theory of Business process reengineering (BPR).[1] In which, they wrote "Re-engineering the Corporation: Manifesto for Business Revolution" in 1993.
Biography
Early life and education
Hammer and his wife, Phyllis Thurm Hammer, lived in Newton, Massachusetts with their four children, including Jessica.[1][2] Hammer attended Massachusetts Institute of Technology earning his bachelors degree in math in 1968. He earned his Master's degree in electrical engineering in 1970. Hammer decided to earn his doctorate in computer science in 1973.[3]
Career
Hammer started his career as a Professor of Computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology . Engineer by training, Hammer was the proponent of a process-oriented view of business management. After Hammer graduated from the institute, he worked in the department of Computer Science and as a lecturer's "assistant" in the MIT Sloan School of Management. In 1987, he worked as a managing consultant; he taught theory and practice of how businesses do quality and non-quality work. This research is where he started to study how to re-engineer corporations/business processes. This inspired his international best seller, "Re-engineering the corporation".[3] Later on he launched the managing consulting firm Hammer and Company, located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He served as the company's president, making it a research and business education firm.
He spent most of his time as a lecturer, consultant, and author. Articles written by Hammer have been published in the Harvard Business Review and The Economist. Some of his writings include:
- The Re-engineering Revolution: A Handbook (1995)
- Beyond Re-engineering: How the Process-centered Organization is Reshaping Our Work and Our Lives (1996).
- "Re-engineering Revolution" was on the best seller list for 41 weeks.[4]
Forbes magazine ranked Hammer's book, Re-engineering the Corporation, among the "three most important business books of the past 20 years".[citation needed] TIME named him as one of America's 25 most influential individuals, in its first such list.[citation needed]
Death
Hammer was 60 years old when he died from complications of a brain Hemmorage he suffered while on vacation. The funeral was held on September 5 in Stanislavsky memorial Chapel and he is buried in the Baker Street Jewish Cemeteries in West Roxbury, Boston.[3]
Legacy
Business Process Re-engineering
BPR became really popular during the 1990s, due to many business struggling to make profits due to competition, markets, and increase in modern technology. BPR the ability to redesign business processes by making critical improvements to the inner structure of the company like quality, cost, services, output, and efficiency.[5] The main goal would be to cut down costs and improve processes to make things more efficient. Every organization is different in its own way, but following the 5 business RE-engineering steps can dramatically cut down expenses and improve quality and service across the board granting them competitive advantage with in the industry. The 5 BPR steps are:
- define and analyze the current state of business processes
- determine the vision for the redesign
- Identify and redesign
- Design and run test on prototype
- implement/ monitor the new system changes and be mindful of dependencies
- establish performance measures
Hammer and Company
Hammer launched Hammer and Company as a research and business education firm.[6] The company focuses more on discovering major issues in business operations, organizations, management, process. Hammer being well-know for Business process re-engineering, he was able to redesign and reiterate how corporations should improve their process by incorporating Methodology like Lean and Six Sigma. This was done by measuring and managing them. Hammers contribution allowed corporations to achieve unparalleled and efficient improvements in their operating performance. Over a couple of years Hammer and CO was able to help multi companies capitalize on the power of process. His Ideas are still relevant today, it has embedded itself within business and organizations.[7]
Hammer idea of revolution
Hammer's vision was not to fix anything but to restart, start from scratch,[8] he believed that the re-engineering was misunderstood and misinterpreted. He Re-engineered the business process into a brand new structure designed to increase productivity and create more jobs among corporations.[4] One of the ways that contributed to evolution of Business process were he redesigned the hierarchy of directors, managers, and workers. Hammer changed the traditional chain of command more into a collaborative relationship. This re-collaborated how managers would focus more on increase development of employees instead of supervising them. Hammers ideas allowed companies to make fundamental changes to their process and procedure. Which will overall increase their performance.
At the time, the Business model was old and outdated, Hammer was able to realize it needed to be integrated with the current economy. Hammer integrated the increased power of modern information technology. Which allowed multiple businesses to achieve some sufficient improvements to their productivity, lower cost, increase quality, better service.[9] The new principle to this model was to encourage the Specialization of labor to an end to end processes, generally creating more value for the customer.[10] Not only does it benefit the customer but it also will assist in escalating more job growth and production.
