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In essence, Ford had only been applying Smith's principle to automobile production when he set up his continuous production line in Michigan in the early 20th century. Hammer, however, argued that Smith's principle had led to departments and functions that each tried to maximize its own efficiency at the expense of the whole. In essence, Hammer claimed that large companies had become more inefficient by becoming larger and more specialized. The solution, according to Hammer, Davenport, and Champy was twofold: First, processes needed to be conceptualized as complete, comprehensive entities that stretched from the initial order to the delivery of the product.

Introduction xxxiii Although the C M M model is more commonly applied to large organizations, the model can also serve as an excellent reference model for small- and medium-size firms. Remember the key point of such reference models is to help you understand where you are today and to assist in developing a road map to help you get where you want to go. No one is suggesting that all companies should attempt to follow the model in the same exact way. The key assumption that the C M M team makes is that immature organizations don't perform consistently.

Typically, one departmental system wouldn't talk to another, and the data stored in the databases of sales couldn't be exchanged with data in the databases owned by accounting or by manufacturing. In essence, in an effort to make each department as professional and efficient as possible, the concept of the overall process was lost. The emphasis on value chains and systems in the 1980s and the emphasis on business process reengineering in the early 1990s was a revolt against excessive departmentalism and a call for a more holistic view of how activities needed to work together to achieve organizational goals.