Many businesses today are interested in re-shaping (a.k.a. re-engineering) their internal procedures and processes. A process is
any operational or administrative system which
transforms inputs into valued outputs - typically a sequence
of tasks arranged into a procedure or set of work arrangements perhaps involving
various machines, departments and people. Making sandwiches to order is a process.
Seeing a sales order through from beginning to end or stock replenishment
procedures are typical systems.
Procedures for maintaining an aircraft e.g. in a hanger or whilst
waiting on the tarmac between flights are further examples.
BPR projects are popular today as critical revisions may contribute substantially to the performance improvements needed for competitiveness. American Express reported major cost savings through re-engineering, Texas Instruments (Semiconductors) cut its order processing time and substantially improved customer perceptions of the firm offering poor services.
Clearly re-engineering, process innovation or business process re-engineering (BPR) are buzz words. Business managers are buzzed and pushed to tackle problems in recommended ways! BPR as a brand of corporate castor-oil is a formula and as such the call of nature and its claims needs to be understood. There are many definitions:
Hammer, one of the high priests of BPR calls the approach:
Rethinking and redesigning business processes to bring
about sharp improvements in performance.
So BPR is a call-to-arms, a change driving method. The claim is that re-engineering old, encrusted systems helps an organisation achieve radical change in performance, costs, cycle times and product/service quality.
The cry of the Gurubird is:
"Try the BPR method --->>>>> improve your performance." 
BPR means starting from scratch. The adage has it that;
If you want to get to Heaven, I wouldn't start
from here.Instead........
The imperatives of BPR are to
The approach and tools of BPR serve the aspirations of business strategy makers and implementors. If the target is to obtain better operating ability to satisfy customers then radical change may be needed. A BPR programme becomes a tactic, a programme to achieve desired results. BPR in isolation from strategic plans will not work. The committment of strategic managers is essential. Isolated re-engineering efforts will have no direction and will get lost.
The aims, processes and outcomes of BPR have roots in various organisational efficiency, productivity and competitiveness movements.
In a sense the process improvement movement is a form of neo-Taylorism. In the eyes of those who may lose jobs or who are affected by new job demands arising from re-engineering - BPR smacks of managerially imposed change.
BPR speak is laced with iconic terms such as radical, fundamental, cross-functional process, and dramatic.
When the pressure is on, we become pushed by imperatives and calls to action. Business leaders look for the Holy Grail - new forms of energy, new heuristics to boost effort, tighten belts, keep the firm ahead, driving on, clear of competitiors. Pragmatism means DO IT NOW and ADD VALUE at every stage of bringing goods and services to market. Delight =customers in doing so.
Managers - as applied scientists or artisans - have, since Abraham Derby, Wedgewood and Brunel and before, combined new, technical ability with machines and people in logical, controlled, resourced and measured arrangements and sequences of tasks for improved efficiency and productivity. F.W. Taylor engineered processes and of course Ford, IBM, the military and companies the world over took up these ideas with a vengence
Markets demanded quality, value-for-money goods produced in high volume. This is the simple notion Ford put to effect. Has anything changed other than that there are more competitors after ever more sophisticated customers?
In the 1980's competition from Pacific rim countries and the recession, triggered the so-called total quality movement and calls for excellence. TQM and ISO 9000 place stress on process design for zero defects.
Interest in industrial engineering was rekindled. The skills of management services, method study and industrial engineering specialists in the late 70's had been largely relegated to the bench. Western businesses were pre-occupied with factory closures, finance and marketing. The late 1980's saw the ability to technically specify methods, operations and engineering in a new light. IT capability for computer-integrated manufacture was enabling complex flows of parts/sub-assemblies to be produced in new, advanced arrangements of machines and people. Integrated manufacturing plants are very different from the noise, fumes, dirt and grind of the old engineering works. Flexible manufacturing systems and and information processing power is possible in ways Taylor could never have envisaged.
In the writer's experience of working for a food processing organisation in the 1970s, managerial conversations seldom referenced customers or the quality of the tea bags, coffee or ice-cream being produced. Of course there were taste panels and quality control using sampling methods (testing for rejects and then re-working if found). Today however, the managerial mind-set has changed substantially. Quality imperatives permeate the discussions of project teams, customer service centres, manufacturing cells, marketing departments and Board-rooms.
By the late 1980s, re-engineering ideas became popular in IT quarters as organisations took stock of the costs of mainframe dominated, information processing. Systems specialists began to see how PC and mini computer networks with newer, higher productivity software development tools offered flexibility over 70's and 80's architectures (mainframe installations). Large software systems were growing old, their functionality limited by the early tools used to construct them. New tools (client server databases, graphic interfaces, fourth generation lanaguages) could cut development and maintenance costs and provide far more knobs, buttons, access and processing power than ever imagined by a COBOL programmer.
Firms had millions of lines of code to maintain. As systems were enhanced and modified to accommodate changes within the business, the code becomes patched and even more difficult to maintain. Decision points are reached where complete re-writes are necessary. Often operational, administrative and departmental structures and procedures had tended not to change substantially because of their dependency on complex mainframe business applications. If the latter are to be re-designed, then is it also not timely to re-design business processes e.g. how we process materials replenishment, how we sell insurance policies to customers. Why re-write a computer system without improving the business process it serves?
BPR: How to do it?
Guidance on HOW TO DO IT - is offered by the BPR gurus. They present a checklist of steps, a kitbag of methods, words of warning and caution. Typically the argument goes as follows.
A firm analysing competitive issues and strategic options, may focus on:
Stages in a BPR Programme
Form a BPR Policy Group
A senior management team can identify the processes
that fall short of customer expectations, management aspirations,
and competitor performance. The POLICY GROUP can then map out a plan for an
overall BPR programme, deciding on processes to be re-engineered and their sequence.
Difficulties will include:
Propose performance directions and possible targets (challenging ones) for each process e.g. cut cycle times by 30% or improve measured levels of customer satisfaction by 20%.
Appoint BPR Process Owners and Build the BPR Project Team
The policy makers must now appoint "process owners" to take responsibility for the "project" which will involve
root and branch re-engineering of a selected process.
The owner role is a difficult one. Each owner assembles a cross functional re-engineering team (5-10 people: insiders and outsiders). How the team is assembled is another BPR problem.
Before generating new process designs, a BPR team will need detailed information and understanding of the current process and its goals. Comprehending the existing process is vital when later considering re-design options. However full-scale analysis may involve:
Team Focusing and Development
Communication and Consultation
While team is getting its act together, the BPR policy makers need a
company-wide communication programme to promote and sell the overall BPR approach.
NOTE: this description so far hardly references processes of consultation with other managers and staff at lower organsiational levels. This is unilateral, visionary management in action! However if BPR is to work, an autocratic, punitive management style is a problem. BPR requires "joint-problem solving in teams". Launching a BPR programme is a top management decision and for a proramme to progress smoothly with few resistences (formal or informal) then managers must sell and persuade rather than impose. Open, honest communication throughout is essential. The message may be that the organisation must change and that change will affect everyone. Such imperatives are generally founded on an economic platform defined by management rather than the staff - some of whom may face redundancy or sunstantial job change. This is one of the essential tensions of BPR.
The savings/costs, staffing changes, departmental adjustments, information systems and budgets have all to be worked out.
The team must present its re-design. In terms of participative management - this is likely to herald the start of problems.
We need a detailed plan to introduce and embed the new process assuming that the BPR team are right in their recommendations!
The team, working with and backed by the policy makers must plan the pilot, prepare staff, develop change over strategy, and sell the new working arrangements. Maximum senior management involvement is crucial. It is they who are faced with big decisions to "require the change to be implemented". The managerial drive, consultation and acceptance issue looms again.
Implementation can take several forms:
Once the new process is implemented and functioning, the BPR team must
BPR review may come easily to organisations that practice CQI and TQM as part of their business culture. However, if such experience is lacking it needs to be acquired to complete the re-engineering and CQI cycle.
