Redesigning Information Production Processes for Controlled Production Time

In this article we focus on organizations that manufacture products consisting of information. Examples of this kind of organizations are banks, insurance companies and parts of the government. We cornpare these information producing organizations with organizations that deliver material (tangible) products, like cars, electronic devices and clothing. The introduction of information technology in these latter organizations has led to measurably better performance; but these iraprovements are barely entangled in information producing organizations. In the article we try to understand why this is the case and how we can improve the performance of information producing organizations by looking at material production. The first section discusses the research field and the problems faced. The second section suggests that the problems may arise from a lack of methodology to design information production processes. The last section takes the production control system for information production as an example to demonstrate an approach for redesign towards better logistic performance. Keyword Codes: H.1.0, H.4.0, H.4.2