Week 6 - Basic of BPR (2)

Source / Reference:
1)  "A survey of current practice and future trends in integrated management" by Mohamed Zairi and David Sinclair 1995

http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journals.htm?issn=1463-7154&volume=1&issue=1&articleid=843362&show=html

Subject:
In Lect 6 - How BPR facilitates a business in reality?

Response:

From the lecture, we knew that BPR can facilitate the business process of a company in different aspects. However, we can only have a brief idea of what BPR is but not a detail one. From this article, it showed that how the companies in the outside world perceive BPR and how they will use it in the future. 

The goal of BPR is to have radical improvement of processes. Although there are many kinds of tools and techniques used in re-engineering efforts, BPR does not refer to any use of specific tools or techniques. The common tools and techniques are shown as follow:

- Process Visualization: Develop a vision of the process

- Information Technology: Act as a powerful enabler in the redesign of organizational processes

- Change Management: Focused on the human side of re-engineering, such as changing the way to mange human resources

- Benchmarking: It allows visualization and development of processes 

- Industrial Engineering: Industrial engineers are in a unique position to perform the benchmarking operations

- Process and Customer Focus: To redesign processes with regard to improving performance from the customer's perspective

In the article, it suggested that to be success, BPR must be integrated with other aspects of management such as TQM. TQM involves placing the customers as the focal point of operations. The aim is to continuously improve process performance in order to satisfy customer requirements. In order to maximize the benefits from each, there is a need to clarify the relationship between BPR and TQM.

In the survey, all of the companies from different sectors have already experienced both BPR and TQM and they agreed that both BPR and TQM must be driven by strategy since it can clearly define the goal of the processes which helps developing the redesign processes.

The survey claimed that after the implementation of BPR, the actual level of improvement across all factors was less than the level expected. Also, the actual time-scale of re-engineering projects always exceeded the expected time scale. Some people suggested that these may due to inexperience in BPR. Although the improvement is lower than the expectation, the expected benefits in terms of performance improvements greatly exceeded the actual benefits of BPR, which has increased their competitiveness

In addition, it showed that managing directors are the primary initiators of BPR projects. And it suggested that senior management commitment required for successful BPR should be forthcoming.

Other than that, from the lecture, we always focus on the role of IT, however in the reality, IT is not the most important techniques in BPR. From the survey, the most important techniques in BPR were considered to be training employees, the communication of objectives and performance measurement.


And not all the BPR can facilitate the organization, even inhibit the performance. Only two factors, existing information systems and management systems were defined as inhibitors more often than facilitators. But this does not apply to all the cases, since from the survey, organization from different sectors showed different answers.

Although different sectors place differing emphasis on the various tools and techniques of BPR,  we can still conclude some ideas that can apply to all organization in various sectors. To conclude, with more experience, people may gain more from BPR as they may have better planning and expectation of the processes. Also, project must be led with an experienced managing directors as this may affect the level of success of the project. That is, means are deemed suitable on case-by-case basis. BPR can form an integral part of management of any organization when used correctly.