On Using Artificial Intelligence to Integrate the Design of Organizational and Process Change in US Manufacturing

The poor success rates that US manufacturing companies have experienced with computerized process and information technologies are reviewed. Reasons for this lack of success are also reviewed, indicating that inadequate pre-planning for the social as well as technology changes concommitant with modernization efforts account for most of the failures. Tools to facilitate soeiotechnical integration planning are reviewed with regards to a list of acceptability criteria that tools should meet. This review indicates the need for an AI-based software program that allows modernization practitioners and academic management-of-technology scholars to simulate alternative supportive organizational technological plans for different business and technical objectives. Such a tool called HITOP-A (Highly Integrated Technology, Organization, and People-Automated) is described here