Improved project management through improved document management Eero Eloranta a,1 , Ari-Pekka Hameri b,* , Mika Lahti c,2 a Department of Industrial Management, Helsinki University of Technology, FIN-02150 Helsinki, Finland b Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales, University of Lausanne, BFSH-1, CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland c Nokia Group, Nokia Incorporation, Corporate Headquarters, FIN-00045 Helsinki, Finland Received 28 September 1998; accepted 22 April 2001 Abstract By drawing from field studies on three different types of business projects the paper outlines a improved document management approach. The three global cases, which comprise business process re-engineering (BPR), new product development (NPD) and one-of-a-kind manufacturing, enable to track a common set of document based operations which hold the vital information for the success of respective cases. This information reveals what is the true active organisation of the enterprise, what are the document usage profiles of the people and how knowledge-related creative processes are really performed by the organisation. In addition, the management is provided with new means to measure operational performance with better encompassing metrics. The approach and its partial implementation act as glue between various systems used within and between the collaborating companies. # 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. Keywords: Product data management; Business process engineering; One-of-a-kind industries; New product development 1. Introduction This paper intends to cast light on the management of project-oriented business processes. We aim to facilitate project-oriented business process manage- ment by the tools provided with electronic document management. The paper is divided into three parts: process management, document management and case studies. Therefore, we start our reasoning in the realm of business problems. After elaborating business problems associated with various business processes the viewpoint is shifted towards document management. Towards the end of the paper the focus is more on practice. Three case studies focusing on business process and document management pro- blems in one-of-a-kind production (OKP) business, on project and document challenges of global business process re-engineering (BPR) projects and, finally, on the document flow linkages of complex new product development (NPD) projects are presented. The conjecture of the paper is constructive: is it possible to facilitate business process management with partially automated document management con- ventions? The economic potential of this approach may be considerable, because of the vast breadth and depth of the problems associated with management of project-oriented business processes. Computers in Industry 45 (2001) 231–243 * Corresponding author. Tel.:þ41-21-692-3460; fax: þ41-21-692-3495. E-mail addresses: eero.eloranta@hut.fi (E. Eloranta), ari-pekka.hameri@hec.unil.ch (A.-P. Hameri), mika.s.lahti@nokia.fi (M. Lahti). 1 Tel.: þ358-9-4511. 2 Tel.: þ358-71-8008000. 0166-3615/01/$ – see front matter # 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. PII:S0166-3615(01)00099-9