ABC Toolkit

ABC Toolkit is an extension of Micrografx’s successful ABC Flowcharter product. Flowcharter is a powerful and accessible Windows flowcharting package. It offers a wealth of features for building flowcharts. There are Five line types with 16 head/tail symbols. There are 300 shapes on 25 pre-arranged palettes, with provision for custom shapes. Text can be hidden in notes, placed freeform on the chart, or attached to shapes or lines.
AM Todkrt includes OLE ond import/export support Charts can be up to 250cm by 250cm. They can be linked to other charts to form a hierarchy.
But, thought the folks at Micrografx, you want more! ABC Toolkit is aimed at the corporate market, to provide a low-cost tool for business process improvement and re-engineering. There are two elements to the package. The first is ABC ProcessAnalyzer. This is a souped up version of ABC Flowcharter 3- There are some small additions, including a new palette, a new line style for cause and effect (aka fishbone or Ishikawa) charts and a spellchecker. But the main enhancement is user-definable data fields for lines and shapes. For each field you can assign a name, type, format and summation method, as well as numerous formatting options. A typical use for these would be recording the time and cost requirements of a stage in a business process. You can display a summary box on the chart, which will sum all the relevant fields on that chart. You can run input, output and metrics reports on the fields.
The second plank in the toolkit is ABC Data Analyzer. The base product, Winchart. has been modified to look as much like ABC Flowcharter as possible.
Micrografx has integrated the elements well — former ABC users should have no difficulties getting up and running.
ABC DataAnalyzer aims to help you analyse and communicate your process model. You bring in data from Process-Analyzer (or enter it directly), and use the instant charting options. These include Pareto, histogram, run, pie, scatter and control charts. When you want to share your engineering revelations, you can tart up the charts as presentation items. DataAnalyzer also brings some drawing and annotation features (including the creation of custom shapes for chart palettes).
The designers have included OLE and import/export support, so that data can be updated automatically, or moved elsewhere (say, into a spreadsheet for what-if analyses).
But wait! There’s more! Not content with providing a solid toolset for process analysis. MicroGrafx has thrown in а 1хюк — Eating the Chocolate Elephant — by Mark Youngblood (a Micrografx vice-president) which outlines his concept of Total Process Management. This is touted as an original synthesis of TQM and business process re-engineering theory. It’s interesting, but you don’t need to agree with (or even read) the lxx>k to get value from the software. (See review in Bibliofile.)
Combining an unusual feature set in an accessible package, ABC Toolkit offers much to business process analysts.