Introduction to Workflow

Little has changed in centuries—supervisors assign work, perhaps based on training, skills, and experience, to various resources. At first the resources were only people, eventually supported by tools such as typewriters, printed forms, and adding machines. Eventually some of the steps were automated—the invoices were automatically totaled and printed, but only after people sorted the punched cards, or entered the data. Even though the performance of the work was at least partially automated, the management of the work had changed little—supervisors assigned work and monitored pe rformance. Clerks passed the work from station to station. Lists were made to track the work—to find it when it went astray, and to measure the productivity. And an army of expediters searched for the problems and errors in the routing, and kept it moving.