Autor: Carsten Behrens

In many organizations process-oriented management systems suffer missing acceptance by employees, quick to return a verdict: no practical benefit, merely for audit trail bureaucracy, or only suited for experts on the system. This weakness can be resolved successfully by combining process-oriented quality and know-ledge management in an innovative way, enriched by principles from social media. By including useful applications and providing a consistent integration of production systems like ERP or CRM, the management system will become a valuable process portal. With the help of this portal the user can reliably navigate through the various IT solutions implemented in the organisation.

Many companies use Web2.0 applications in their internal processes to benefit from the advantages known from the internet. However experience shows that the connected benefit does not meet the expectations previously described. A taxonomy which supports a successful implementation on wiki based, interactive process management systems is presented. The taxonomy was developed by the company Modell Aachen UG in cooperation with the WZL of RWTH Aachen and is used in several implementation projects successfully.

Outsourcing has become an important and even ordinary tool for enterprises to concentrate on their core competences: external know-how can be implemented into research, development and production by leaving out internal services to business partners. But in the past the most interesting partner for outsourcing has not been recognized yet. Creating space for the customer to participate in configuration and even development is the aim of Embedded Open Toolkits for User Innovation (EMOTIO), advanced by the Laboratory for Machine Tools WZL of RWTH Aachen University. Therefore the customer is offered room to modify actual configurations and even implement own creative solutions during the practical use of a product. These changes will be evaluated and leaded back into the production process to improve the product successively.

A new business model, conceived by WZL of the University of Aachen, bases on Open Source development and advances Outsourcing. Commercial Open Source Development (COSD) has the capability to break open the area of conflict between customer orientation, individualisation, product design costs and error probability by embedding the customer systematically and lucratively into product development. Two trends of product design support COSD: Functions of technical products can be increasingly affected through Software solutions; Open Source principals have reached a high level of maturity.

In the past few years importance of strategic management increased. Although enterprises invest into the development of strategies, many strategy processes fail in implementation. Today an important factor of influence is respected intuitively only: The level of detail of strategy. This article introduces an industry-proved tool, which determines the right level of detail for a successful strategy-implementation. Furthermore it allows a monitoring of strategy formulation and implementation-situation.