The Trend of OA
Takashi WATANABE
OA was introduced to help the individual do the office job
quickly in the 1980s. With advent of 1990s, it achieved rapid
development with the information technique bringing about
superior performance of each information equipment and dramatic
plungs in its price. As a result, the times have come when every
office worker is provided one personal computer. Information
equipment such as the personal computer is now connected with
the network at the same time and the information is shared both
at the company level and the individual level. Moreover, a lot
of enterprises introduce the groupware such as the electronic
mail and the work flow control trying to do business quickly
and efficiently as a whole. In the future, OA will shift its
emphasis on supporting the advanced office work of creative
consideration/judgement with adoption of newer media and
technique such as multimedia and Internet. It is expected
that the office will increasingly aspire for true inovation
in the 21th century.