The cost to duplicate paper was high enough that copies were
rarely made; so most processes were serial.
Since paper could only be in one place at a time, it was processed one
step at a time. Every step was on the
critical path, nothing could be done in parallel.
If you did not have the piece of paper with the information
you needed then you could not do your job.
It was expensive to search for information. If the paper you needed was in central filing,
then it as long as it was filed correctly, you could easily find it. But if the piece of paper you needed was on
someone else’s desk, such as the one depicted in Figure 1.1,
it could be almost impossible to find.
Figure 1.1: What was it you wanted?
Although difficult to manage, paper provided a constraint on
processes that made them easier to control.
Removing paper removed the constraint and broke that control.
Paper was a constraint that had to be dealt with when
creating processes. In general people had
to wait for paper to come to them.
Processes had to be designed to deliver the right piece of paper at the
right time to the right person or there was nothing for that person to do. The potential impact of losing a piece of
paper was so high that processes were tightly scripted to execute the same way
every time.
Paper not only acted as the physical container of
information, it also acted as the token to perform work. The arrival of a piece of paper on your desk
indicated there was something new to do.
At the same time, the arrival of that piece of paper made it clear who
had responsibility for that work. It was
you. For every piece of paper, the
person who had it, also had the responsibility for taking care of the next
activity represented by that paper.
The constraint caused by paper created a level of process
control. It was possible to see and
manage information processes by watching the flow of paper. Because paper was expensive to move, the
travel distance from one desk to the next was kept short and obvious. The amount of paper on a person’s desk was a
clear and visible method for determining how much work they had to do. Management had real-time indicators of where
the bottlenecks were and their options for reducing them.
The office was a paper factory. It had clear production lines based on the
principles of mass production. The work
was followed a controlled serial flow.
Specialized roles performed their task and then passed paper on to the
next role. Process variation was kept to
a minimum to avoid losing a piece of paper and the information contained on it.
Real-time metrics were available by counting the paper as it flowed through the
process.
Then computers came on the scene. In addition to their computing capabilities
they offered an alternative to the paper storage of information. Slowly, at a pace that no one could notice,
information that was captured on paper was now being stored on computers. Bit-by-bit computer storage systems took over
the role of storing the world’s information.
A study appearing Feb. 10, 2011 in Science Express
found that beginning in 1986 the share of paper-based storage mediums began
decreasing, from 33% that year, to .007% in 2007[i]. At the same time the amount of information
being captured is increasing. An IDC study
estimates that in 2011 the amount of information created and replicated will
surpass 1.8 zettabytes (1.8 trillion gigabytes) – growing by a factor of 9 in
just five years[ii].
This is not an indication that paper is going away. It’s not.
Global production in the pulp, paper, and publishing sector is expected
to increase by 77% from 1995 to 2020[iii]. But computers have overtaking the use of
paper as the primary information storage medium.
The transition from
information being stored on paper to computers has fundamentally changed
information processes. Information is
now:
1. Invisible
– It’s no longer possible to see the process flow. It’s hard to tell where the information came from
and where it’s going next. It’s
difficult to see how much is left to do and where the bottlenecks are.
2.
Easy to access – Whereas a piece of paper could
be difficult to track down, computers make it easier to search for information,
if you know where and how to search.
3.
Available - When information was on paper, the
person owning the paper owned the information.
Organizational empires were built based on who owned the
information. Now information is more
readily available to those with the appropriate access rights.
4.
Everywhere – The distribution cost for
information is much lower than paper.
Copies are “free.” As a result
information flows as freely as water.
But it’s difficult to follow everywhere it goes and why. And it is also difficult to determine which
copy is the accurate copy.
5.
Morphing – Paper was a single consistent storage
medium. Now information comes in many
flavors including unstructured data, structured data, email, instant messaging,
voice, and video.
6.
Exploding – Because the cost to capture and
store information keeps dropping, so much more of it is stored. So even though it is easier to access, the
sheer amount of information available makes it difficult to find the right
information at the right time.
7.
Harder to control – With so much invisible
information at our finger tips it is much more difficult for anyone to see
exactly what they need.
In a relatively short period of time, the reduction of paper
as a distribution and storage medium helped to increase productivity and reduce
costs. However, with the paper
constraint removed processes have become unleashed.
What is the difference between the desks depicted in Figure 1.1
and Figure 1.2? The desk in Figure 1.2
certainly looks less cluttered, and the worker less harried. But is it just the tip of an iceberg? Has the mess of paper in Figure 1.1
just been converted into a mess of data files on a computer? Does the worker in Figure 1.2
appear more relaxed because he can’t see all of the work that is waiting for
him?
Figure 1.2: Is everything under control here?
Not only did removing paper break process control. At the same time it also made process
invisible. What is left is the
perception of control when little actually exists.
Computers have changed the world; but processes have not
kept up. It’s time to update our
approach to information processes in order to tame the rivers of invisible
information that have literally sprung up overnight.
[i] Martin
Hilbert and Priscilla Lopez, The World's
Technology Capacity to Store, Communicate and Compute Information, Science
Express (2011)
[ii] John Gantz and David
Reinsel, Extracting Value from Chaos,
IDC (2011)
[iii] Organisation
for Economic Co-Operation and Development, OECD
Environmental Outlook (2001)
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