Process Design and Integration Theory

Over the past several decades a number of organizations have made significant progress in evolving highperformance production systems. Anecdotal observations of successful systems typically provide the basis for organizational initiatives that practitioners attempt to copy and transplant into other organizations, sometimes resulting in successful applications and sometime in expensive failures. This paper presents concepts that constitute a framework for a general theory for process design and integration. The framework consists of an axiom, three laws, and seven principles. The ultimate goal of the framework is to identify and explain underlying elements that influence high performance in any/all production systems.