Business Process Re-Engineering
The manufacturing industry today is significantly challenged by slow growth and a tough global economy. In order to remain competitive in the global marketplace, manufacturers are adopting radical corporate strategies - like flattening the organization, globalizing production, forming strategic alliances with customers, suppliers and competitors, merging with other companies to form new structures, decentralizing business units, and creating global business units. Having to deal with a whole new set of non-traditional competitors can slow progress of even the sleekest of companies. This has necessitated Business Process Re-Engineering (BPR) for manufacturers of all sizes (Greenberg, 2004).
Background
There a number of definitions of business process re-engineering (BPR). Klein and Manganelli in their book "The Reengineering Handbook" defines it as the "Rapid and radical redesign of strategic, value added business processes-and the systems, policies and organizational structures that support them-to optimize work flows and productivity within an organization (Greenberg, 2004).
. Johansson and McHugh in their book "Business Process Reengineering: Breakpoint Strategies for Market Dominance," defines it as "The means by which an organization can achieve radical change in performance, as measured by cost, cycle time, service and quality, by the application of a variety of tools and techniques that focus on the business as a set of related customer-oriented core business processes rather than a set of organizational functions. Robert Jacobs in his book, "Real Time Strategic Change" defines strategic change (similar in concept to BPR) as an "Informed, participative process resulting in new ways of doing business that position an entire organization for success, now and into the future." (Greenberg, 2004).
Analysis of Business Needs
The first step of any process is to define levels of process and the needs to meet these different stages of any business re-engineering plan. The reason we need to define and frame the set of goals or needs the business requires is to resolve the problem and not the symptom of any problem. This can easily be the case if in-depth analysis is not followed by asking the following questions broken up in 6 stages. (Greenberg, 2004).
Stage 1
Preparation: What is the level of organizational commitment; what are the expectations; what are the project goals? Who should be on the team? What are the required skill sets? How will results be communicated to the organization?
Stage 2
Identification: What are the major business processes? How do these processes interact with customer and supplier processes?;
Stage 3
Vision: What are the sub-processes, activities and steps that makeup the major business processes; How do resources, information and work flow through each process; Why do we do the things we do now (getting out of the box or mental prison);
In today's competitive marketplace, all firms are seeking ways to improve their overall performance. One such method of improvement, recently adopted by many firms, is benchmarking. Benchmarking is a technique used to evaluate internal business processes. "In this analysis, managers determine the firm's critical processes and outputs, baseline those processes, then compare the performance of each process against a standard outside the industry" (Bounds, Yorks, Adams, & Ranney 1994). To effectively improve a business process to world-class quality, managers must find a firm that is recognized as a global leader, not just the industry standard. Successful benchmarking requires tailor-made solutions, not just blind copying of another organization. Measurement and interpretation of data collected is the key to creating business process solutions.
Bjerke, Juel M. "Week 2 Lecture Notes - Achieving Business Process Excellence and Process Re-engineering." MFGO 601 - The Globally Integrated Manufacturing Company. 2 Nov. 2011.
Business processes perspective is an opportunity for the company to set goals to improve areas of their business which may be not as strong as other areas, such as increasing efficiency on the manufacturing line. It could also be setting goals to launch new products or services quicker than when planned. As stated above, the business processes could progress from the learning and growth perspective (Savkin,
In addition to Kotter and Lewin there are other change models, including Business Process Reengineering (BPR). BPR focuses on the improvement of particular processes within a company in order to create a more efficient, less costly, and overall more effective structure for a business (Pellicelli, Meo, and Cioffi, 2012). BPR holds a strong top-down approach, relying on leadership to assess and review current processes, as they relate to cost, effectiveness, and ultimately how the customer receives the service or product the firm provides (Pellicelli et all., 2012). The model imperatively asserts that leadership be skilled and observant, while the process is ongoing, that the flow of information is constant, and that change be results driven
Highly competitive environment and need of innovation, the companies are facing high pressures to innovate and improve the business process. As IT budgets are limited, process owners and IT departments need to decide how to divide their spending on efficiency and flexibility enhancing IT capabilities to optimally support the execution of business processes. The limited IT budgets put pressure on IT process owners to find the perfect mix to achieve the efficiency and flexibility to support smooth execution of business processes (Heckmann, 2015). IT departments need to find the right balance to use IT budget and decision making ability and play their role in maximizing the organization’s revenue.
...eral Electric and Others Turned Process into Profits. John Wiley. 2001. Ellis j & Williams D (1993) Corporate strategy and financial analysis. Pitman Grundy T (1998) Exploring strategic financial management. Prentice Hall. Johansson, Henry J., Patrick McHugh, A. John Pendlebury and William A. Wheeler III. Business Process Reengineering: Breakpoint Strategies for Market Dominance. Wiley, 1993. Johnson j & scholes k (2002) Exploring corporate strategy 6th ed. Financial times-Prentice hall. Kubeck, Lynn C. Techniques for Business Process Redesign: Tying It All Together. Wiley-QED Publication, 1995. Price Waterhouse Change Integration Team. Better Change: Best Practices for Transforming Your Organization. Irwin, 1995. Rummler, Geary and Alan Brache. Improving Performance: How to Manage the White Space on the Organization Chart. (2nd Ed.) Jossey-Bass, 1990.
Recker, J., & Mendling, J. (February 01, 2016). The State of the Art of Business Process Management Research as Published in
Customers are those who benefit from the business process whether directly or indirectly. The second part of the work system is Product & Services which are the outputs of the business process. Thirdly there is the Business Process itself and that is a set of steps performed to provide a good or service for the customers. Fourthly comes the Participants whom are the people involved in performing the business process. This is followed by Information and that is any type of data that is inputted or outputted into/out of the business process. Another part of the work system is the Technology and that is anything dedicated to the business process. Then Context follow which is anything (internal/external) that shapes the business process such as laws and regulations. Finally is Infrastructure which is anything (technology, informati...
- Rockart, J.F., 1979, "Chief executives define their own data needs", Harvard Business Review, 57, 2, 81-93.
Define the current situation - break down problem into component parts, identify major problem areas, develop a target improvement goal
Business Process Management is defined as the achievement of an organization’s objectives through the improvement, management and control of essential business processes. (5)
Business Process Model is a set of technologies and standards for the design, execution, administration, and monitoring of business processes. (Havey 2005)
According to Chang, (2016), Business Process Management (BPM) is a systematic approach of attaining organization’s goals by improving its management in addition to controlling the essential business processes. Moreover, a business process is defined as a set of activities that aid in accomplishing definite organizational goals. One of the aims of BPM is to trim down human fault and miscommunication as it can be seen in Mike’s Dynatrix Pty Ltd business. It is due to poor infrastructure management, which is significant for maintaining and optimizing an organization’s equipment along with core operations. It is important to note that business process management entails analysis, modeling, design and measurement of an organization’s workflow and are technology enabled. This implies that it is always the point of connection within an organization between the line-of-business and the information technology department.
It’s a rethinking about the way of doing the work in order to develop customer service, cut operational costs, and become world-class competitors. When the company decided to rethink about what it should be doing, this means that the company is trying to do the best. Within the structure of this basic assessment of mission and goals, redesign centers on the organization 's business processes, the steps and procedures that oversee how resources are used to make products and services that meet the needs of certain customers or markets. It’s a pressure of the company to function with reduced resources. As a planned ordering of work steps across time and place, a business process can be decomposed into specific activities, measures, models, and improvements. In addition, business process can either totally redesigned or eliminated at all
In the case, Marks & Spencer and Zara, it discusses two business process designs that each company took. You first had Marks & Spencer, who had a more traditional approach. Their chain started of with the buying team, design, developers, merchandisers, technologist, suppliers, logistics, and lastly the store. Zara, however, comes up with a new innovative design. With this new design in effect the delivery of new collections only has a lead-time of 5 days. They were able to cut down this time due to the fact that products where mainly produced on Galicia.