IT by the Book

摘要

In the 1970s, when the american auto industry found itself under attack by leaner, hungrier Japanese competitors, it fought back by adopting some of the very production processes the Japanese had pioneered. Using techniques such as statistical process control, quality circles, just-in-time inventory management, total quality management, lean manufacturing, and Six Sigma, the industry focused on improving how its people worked and how its processes operated. For example, workers were encouraged to stop the assembly line when anything went wrong so the process could be fixed permanently, rather than simply scrapping rejects at the end of the line. Today, American IT organizations are at a similar crossroads, facing challenges from offshore out-sourcers and from internal financial pressures. In response, they're stealing a page from their global competitors' playbooks — a process framework developed in the United Kingdom called ITIL, or IT Infrastructure Library.