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Prospector type of organizations like the one enunciated by Miles and Snow, innovate continuously, and hence need more flexibility. Here they need flexibility in terms of strategy, structure and process.

If we are looking for clues, we can look towards nature. The individual human beings are similar for a doctor but our body has inbuilt flexibility to perform according to external environment. Also, Darwin told us that this flexibility can't evolve forever otherwise dinosaurs would have existed today.

Similarly, it is theoretically possible to design a standard system where we have infinite flexiblity to customize every component according to need of the business. I don't know if it is practically possible.

The practicality will depend on the extent we can define infinite.

However, logically it is not even possible for a human mind to envisage all future changes and build a flexible mechanism to deal with all consequences. So, practically, we can devise a system which is agile in given circumstances however the degree of agility is restricted to the degree of changes in future.

Both Standardization and Flexibility represent different worlds by meaning, but what needs to be noted here is a relation between them: Incorporating a logical flexibility is nothing but a must to a standardized process.

As long as providing flexibility after the threshold point of resistance to change at each level, then one can call it as a standardized process logically.

Standardization itself to be a process, theoretically needs infinite time to achieve by means of bringing everybody in to same platform, which is practically not possible as each project execution is built on same process set rather from previous project process set.

To put it concisely Standardization should be envisioned as a leveled platform wherein the process of innovation can continue. Having said that, one should have the flexibility of stretching this standardization process for new environments, new ideas.
As Santosh crisply said it all with the doctor example, we should understand that the basic underlying principles for running any business is very much similar. The only difference is what you consider as standards for your business. Flexibility and Standardization are quite different from each other. For example Google, has a standardized way of implementing technology while keeping in mind that it follows its principle of giving a personalized experience for each user. It keeps innovation in mind which is an epitome of flexibility in that they do things like Google green energy, google health etc but keep their basic standards in place for implementing these 'Flexible Innovations'...

Standardization in a nutshell should be seen as a standard implementation of the flexible options one has in hand...

A number of companies have successfully used the concept of "postponement" in their supply chain to remain flexible in meeting customer requirements while achieving economics of scale through standardization in their production of goods. Idea is to shift the customization for a particular market or customer as late as possible in the supply chain. Ideal point for this customization would be when customer comes to buy the product. This way companies remain flexible in converting the inventory to finished goods very late and this helps them in reuse of components across all their offerings/finished goods. Business process orchestration through SOA in IT industry, Built to Order, Assemble to Order in manufacturing industry are some of the concepts that allows bringing flexibility through reuse and assembly of standard components. These concepts are quite powerful and the key thing is to identify the reusable components and heuristics to assemble these reusable components to meet end customer's requirements.

Good comments and a bit from my side.

Though big organizations would like to have standard processes across their markets for the reasons of control as well as to leverage benefits of economies of scale, it shouldn't happen that in the zeal of standardization, you risk loosing existing business.

I am part of a global process harmonization project and found out that typical business processes are evolved over a period of time in a particular market. Many of them are driven by the other stake holders in the market like competition, vendors, buyers etc. So it may not be possible for one player to change the rules of the game by following standard prescription of HQ. Local business has to be sensitive to local practices. If it blindly follows the standard template, it would be odd man out in the market and risk losing the business. So whether it is standard template or custom development, has to be driven by business impact. Each and every process whether standard or customised has to be justified in quantitative terms to evaluate its requirement. Sufficient alternatives ought to be presented to ensure a better option is not left out.

Hello,

I really appreciated this article and the appropriate comments. I'm a student from Germany and right now I'm writing my thesis just on the same topic "is it possible to integrate local flexibility whilst following global standards in context of business processes".

As already one commentator mentioned, it depends what the firm expects to be a "standard". Herein, I got two questions:
1. What makes a Process Standard, i.e., is there any kind of measurement, that says "if exceeding value x we have a standard process"... (sorry for my theoretical approach, unfortunately I lack of practical experience)
2. Is it possible to describe the character of a process and based on this character determine if it is possible to standardize it?

A lot of questions, maybe some of you want to share experience.You're welcome to write me an email, too.

Thank You very much in advance. Hope to gain some knowledge.

Kind Regards
Peter Möderer