What we can say about the Dual Control paradigm in our current day is that the puzzle pieces are at least at our disposal to make Dual Control possible in a networked world. There are newfound tools to provide top down control of mission and policy--of which process manager tools are an important factor. By the same token, control of variation in processes is a well-documented and well-defined phenomenon. By consolidation of processes in a straightforward way, a rich source of data can be made available to managers and workers alike to develop Profound Knowledge of a type not even envisioned by Drs. Shewhart and Deming--beyond many of the barriers of space and time that they encountered.

 

There are many technologies that will contribute to Dual Control of economic institutions.

 

  1)   Process managers are a critical catalyst, as has been stated previously.  

  2)   Globally managed, standards-based networks constitute a critical element to bringing far-flung operations into balance.  

  3)   Integrated management of networked resources by means of software and intelligent devices is also an important element in the quest for Dual Control.  

  4)   Powerful databases, CPUs, and large-scale consolidated data management tools are fundamental elements in being able to organize and evaluate data relationships on a large scale.  

  5)   Secure, ubiquitous software application management as supplied by certificate-based Java and other open, standards-based software tools is a critical element in constantly providing updated functionality.  

  6)   Application and database gateways are necessary elements in bridging functionality between process manager-based processes and other institutional applications and resources.

 

 

With all of the necessary elements for establishing control and balance, what is holding us up from achieving the goal? Education and awareness are primary challenges. We have all grown up in a world in which Dual Control is rare--particularly where policy and process must be expressed principally by means of computers. Achieving the objective now, however, is simply a matter of action. It involves development, not research. Then it will take a lot of practice. Deming has a plan for that, too (his and Shewhart's Plan, Do, Study, Act continuous improvement cycle).

 

Practice is a good thing. Wasn't it our music teachers, after all, who instilled in us the phrase "Practice makes perfect"?