Check the Web sites of the consulting companies listed in the chapter. Which ones impressed you most as a potential client and as a potential employee?
Boston Consulting Group (www.bcg.com)
Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu (www.deloitte.com)
McKinsey & Co. (www.McKinsey.com)
What does it take to be a good consultant? Is this the career for you?
Think about the registration process at your university. Develop a flowchart to understand it. How would you radically redesign this process?
Have you driven any car lately? Try not to think of the insurance claim settlement process while you drive! How would you reengineer your insurance company's claim process?
Identify the typical processes in manufacturing firms. Discuss how the new product development process interacts with the traditional functions in the firm.
In discussing characteristics of efficient plants, Goodson, developer of rapid plant assessments (see the Breakthrough box), suggests that numerous forklifts are a sign of poor space utilization. What do you think is behind this observation?
