Week12 - Process Redesign(3) and Implementation

Source / Reference:
1)  "The new and old of business process redesign" by Michael J Earl 

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0963868794900035

Subject:
In Lect 12 - The new business process redesign

Response:

BPR was defined in 1990 as the analysis and design of work flows and processes within and between organizations. There are different types of business processes affecting internal or external customers including the core processes, support processes, business network processes and management processes. All these types of business process redesign satisfy the requirements that tradition or status quo be challenged which information technology makes new process designs possible.

The fundamentals of BPR can be portrayed as a star. It is derived from a deconstruction of the phenomenon influenced by the existing literature, field studies of BPR in practice, and the experiences reported by leading edge companies. The model of two triangles representing the new BPR concepts also the old elements which are in practice. 

From the new triangle, 
1. Transformation
The promise of BPR is to redesign to achieve the goal of improving performance. A comprehensive and one-step turnaround is suggested. The planning of transformation through BPR can be found in several forms, in terms of understanding important research questions - BPR strategy linkage, and examining appropriate models of strategic change. That is, BPR lies in the resource or capability conceptualization of strategy.
2. Process
Process is the distinctive element of BPR. It focused on activity and is an organizational unit of analysis. It is a central concept of BPR. It represents a natural way of thinking how business works and forces into sharp relief the poor performance. Now some new processes are emerging which may be more complex construct than it first existed.
3. Information Technology
Different business process redesigns have depended on information technology in various level. Applications of IT may be crucial to redesigned process as it provides us a way to integrating functions, enables both collection and dissemination of data through process. However, sometimes it could be a constraint on BPR as the legacy of architectures built to serve the past which may be limits on process integration.


Conclusion
BPR projects are strategic change projects. Each of the elements of the BPR star suggests where the IT may be or may not be.  Although there is a slightly different between the old business process redesign, BPR is still aimed at same goal, to enhance the performance of the business. The added element are the new concepts of BPR. Some of the practical challenges in the old triangle may complicated by the new elements in the new triangle. Although the new elements of BPR do not make the old challenges easier, some organizations have proved that it is worth picking up the challenge of BPR.

Week11 - Redesign Principles and Tactics(2)

Source / Reference:
1)  "eStrategy for Development - Principles & Tactics - Examples in PR" by A. Albadvi 

http://www.moe.org.ir/_ICT/Documents/Session6-7%20BPR%20Basics.pdf

Subject:
In Lect 11 - The real example of applying redesign principles&Tactics

Response:

From the lecture 11, it focused on the last part of the generic IT-enabled BPR Strategies which is the "minding the process". "Minding the process" means changing knowledge management around the process, including analyze and synthesize, connect, collect & create, also personalize. 

Principle #8: Analyze and Synthesize

Using this principle, it can detect patterns and trends, and transform the data around the processes to facilitate decision making and more vale will be generated along the process. There are three common tactics, they are: "what-if" capabilities, "slice and dice"data capabilities and intelligent integration capabilities.


Examples:
It is usually applied to the business which recommendation needed to be made to the customers after they analyzed and summarized the information, including the banking service and investment service. 

Principle #9: Connect, Collect & Create
This principle refers to capture intelligent and reusable knowledge around the process. That is, to collect with different people and collect information, then integrate them and create new information. The common tactics are :  Define procedures to collect knowledge and create physical/virtual spaces for storing the knowledge.


Examples:
In the internet, there are many website using this principle. For example, the FAQ section in each website which gather the information people always confused with and some solution for technical problems. People can learn from the website by themselves.

Principle#10: Personalize
Using this principle, it can make the process intimate with preferences and the habits of participants. That is, to understand the preferences of customers and employees through profiling. Then, fit the business rules to their patterns and develop the most personalized services to the customers. Through the tactics, a list of personal process execution habits will be recorded.


Examples:
Actually nowadays, there are many company are using personalize principle to facilitate their business including most of the airlines or some online retail shops. They provide rating system for the customer which can show the buying preferences of them (collaborative filtering techniques). After that, the company can make prediction and recommend similar products to the customers.For YouTube, when you click on a specific link or video, in the left hand side of the screen will show a list of video you may interested in it based on previous viewers experiences.

Week13 - Redesign Supply Chain Processes

Source / Reference:
1)  "Supply Chain Redasign" by Fred Hewitt 

http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journals.htm?articleid=1527389&show=abstract

Subject:
In Lect 13 - Is supply chain redesign work?

Response:

It is suggested that whether a business process suitable for redesign is judged by their potential impact on relationships with external customers also the potential impact that re-engineering the process might have on business result. To have more detail, we first need to clarify what is a business process and what is the goal of redesign it.

Business Process : It is a set of logically related tasks performed to achieve a defined business outcome.

Process Efficiency : It is defined and measured as the reciprocal of the loss of energy used during the transformation.

Process Effectiveness : It is defined as the frequency with which process outputs conform to their output specifications.

Business Process Management (BPM) : It is to maximize the total process efficiency and effectiveness.

Business Process Redesign (BPR) : It is to improve the efficiency and effectiveness capabilities by redesigning initiatives.

Although there is no universally acceptable template for business process redesign, most of the more advanced attempts to construct enterprise-wide schema including various processes like "order fulfillment", "production and delivery", or "supply chain". And in this paper we will focused on supply chain process.

To begin with, we need to define all measurement and clarify our goal of the redesign job. The goal of BPR in supply chain is to link the market place, distribution network, the manufacturing process and procurement activity in such a way that customers are serviced at higher levels and at lower costs. To measure the effectiveness of the process, it is reflected by the extent to which the process is capable of delivering the right products to customers at the right time. and the efficiency is the reciprocal of total supply chain costs. In this process, it is under activity-based costing. Sometimes based on the total cycle time or the cost. 


No matter in the Intra-Company or the Inter-Company, there are a lot of successful examples of supply chain process redesigning. After the redesign activities, people suggested that the true process redesign is likely to be successful if it is recognized as a multi-dimension, and explicitly addressing the work activity dimension, the information flow dimension and the decision authority dimension. And there are three key dimensions of process redesign identified by the partitioners as being most critical to the success of their BPR efforts.


There are several reasons for why supply chain process enjoying particular interest on BPR. First, there is substantial well documented historical evidence available. Second, this process is generally regarded as primary within overall business enterprise process. A positive effect on supply chain process after redesign can certainly provoke a positive result in the overall business process. 


Although there are a lot of successful cases of BPR, the number of reported failures of BPR is growing. It may due to the inexperience of the manager presented with challenges or wrong application to the process. That is, to avoid failure, it is better for the company or organization hire some expertise or experienced manager to handle the project. And there is no absolute answer, or guarantee for any company to gain success after redesign. After the cost and benefit analysis, the redesign of process, of course,  can bring positive effect to the company, if it is handled well.