Editing Business process (section)

=== Adam Smith ===<!-- This section is linked from [[Division of labour]] -->
An important early (1776) description of processes was that of economist [[Adam Smith]] in his famous example of a [[pin (device)|pin]] factory. Inspired by an article in [[Diderot|Diderot's]] [[Encyclopédie]], Smith described the production of a pin in the following way:<ref name="SmithAnInquiry27">{{cite book |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=rpMuAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA3 |chapter=Book I. Of the Causes of Improvement in the Productive Powers of Labour, and of the Order According to Which Its Produce Is Naturally Distributed among the Different Ranks of the People |title=An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations |author=Smith, A. |publisher=University Press; Thomas Nelson and Peter Brown |year=1827}}</ref>
<blockquote>
One man draws out the wire; another straights it; a third cuts it; a fourth points it; a fifth grinds it at the top for receiving the head; to make the head requires two or three distinct operations; to put it on is a peculiar business; to whiten the pins is another ... and the important business of making a pin is, in this manner, divided into about eighteen distinct operations, which, in some manufactories, are all performed by distinct hands, though in others the same man will sometimes perform two or three of them.
</blockquote>
Smith also first recognized how output could be increased through the use of [[Division of labor|labor division]]. Previously, in a society where production was dominated by [[artisan|handcrafted goods]], one man would perform all the activities required during the production process, while Smith described how the work was divided into a set of simple tasks which would be performed by specialized workers.<ref name="vonScheelPhase114" /> The result of labor division in Smith's example resulted in productivity increasing by 24,000 percent (sic), i.e. that the same number of workers made 240 times as many pins as they had been producing before the introduction of labor division.<ref name="SmithAnInquiry27" />

Smith did not advocate labor division at any price or ''[[wikt:per se|per se]]''. The appropriate level of task division was defined through experimental design of the production process. In contrast to Smith's view which was limited to the same functional domain and comprised activities that are in direct sequence in the manufacturing process,<ref name="SmithAnInquiry27" /> today's process concept includes cross-functionality as an important characteristic. Following his ideas, the division of labor was adopted widely, while the integration of tasks into a functional, or cross-functional, process was not considered as an alternative option until much later.<ref name="GiaglisItsTime12">{{cite book |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=P2DmCAAAQBAJ&pg=PA315 |chapter=It's Time to Engineer Re-engineering: Investigating the Potential of Simulation Modelling for Business Process Redesign |title=Business Process Modelling |author1=Giaglis, G.M. |author2=Paul, R.J.  |editor1=Scholz-Reiter, B. |editor2=Stickel, E.  |publisher=Springer Science & Business Media |year=2012 |pages=313–329 |isbn=9783642803178}}</ref>