Industrialization in IT and Traditional Industries: Similarities and Differences

Abstract

In recent years, increasing pressure on cost-cutting and performance has brought one issue onto the agendas of executives at IT service providers and in company’s internal IT units: the industrialization of IT. According to Brenner et al. (2010, p. 132), industrialization in IT can be described as the “application of successful management concepts and methods from industrial production to IT production”. While this call to copy successful principles from industry—and the automotive industry in particular—may seem natural, the gamut of concepts proposed as guidance is confusing to say the least: from Kaizen to TQM, from modularization to assembly line production, or from automation to rapid prototyping.