5.8. SOA Is a Business Tool, Not Just an IT Tool
SOA is not merely about developing software. It is about seeing into how your enterprise actually works, and improving it.
When properly implemented, SOA will give you, for the first time, a true understanding of how your enterprise really works, at any level of detail. With that understanding, you can revolutionize your organization from the bottom to the top, eliminating redundancy, finding new opportunities, and institutionalizing constant innovation.
When Honda began using robots on its assembly lines, the robots would build a component and then wait for a human worker to carry the finished component to the next robot on the line. The person doing the carrying might have been an extremely creative person—but the assigned task did not require creativity.
Honda realized this, and in a subsequent iteration of their automation strategy, the person carrying finished components from one robot to another was replaced by a robot. Now there are no human workers on the production line—only supervisors.
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