Business Process Re-engineering
About this page:
Organizations are constantly searching for improving their business processes, aimed at automating and simplifying them, with the focus being on satisfying the customer and delivering their needs and wants.
Ez-B-Process motto is To Bring Simplicity, Efficiency, And Effectiveness To Business.
Ez-B-Process has conducted many projects for Small, Mid-size, and Large Organizations: our successfully implemented improved processes and procedures have become organizations' SOPs.
Ez-B-Process has conducted both organization-wide radical reengineering and incremental business process improvements.
We have utilized diversified BPR methodologies, including: Six-Sigma approach, the Balanced Scorecards, the Incremental philosophy, and the Radical reengineering.
We have undertaken the comprehensive approach to implementing both standard ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) systems and improved processes and procedures.
This page is aimed at increasing clients' understanding of key arguments of BPR, and adjusting their expectations from the process and its possible results.
In This Page you'll find issues related to the different aspects of BPR (business process reengineering), presented in an academic manner:
Six Sigma approach to BPR,
Lean Six Sigma approach,
Balanced Scorecard philosophy,
References are in APA Style, and whenever possible, they include links to the sources (e.g., books, articles, websites, etc.).
A list of selected BPR Projects carried out during the last two decades, is available.
You may also want to view the other pages related to business consulting services; IT Development, and Small Businesses as well as the Resources page.
Please Contact us for more information about our Business Consulting Services (Please do not modify the subject line of the email).
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Hammer and Champy (1993): “The fundamental rethinking and radical redesign of business processes to achieve dramatic improvements in critical, contemporary measures of performance, such as cost, quality, service and speed”.
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Davenport and Short (1990): “The analysis and design of workflows and processes within and between organisations”.
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Parker (1993): “The use of evolutionary tools/ techniques combined with enabling technologies to provide an explosive mix to make dramatic change throughout the organisation”.
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Hewitt and Yeon (1996): “Is BPR a tool-based methodology, analogue to Operations Research; or a management philosophy, comparable to Scientific Management Theory; or is it something else, a discrete and
temporary activity, analogue to a performance improvement project?” -
Hammer (1996): "By implementing Re-engineering, the entire organisational structure changes, from the Hierarchical structure to the Process-Centred Structure."
Processes, according to Hammer, not only cross functional departments within the organisation, but also should break away from the organisation’s boundaries and include customers and suppliers, as if they were part of the organisation. A process has been started before the organisation is involved, and will probably be continued by the customer.
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Kaplan and Norton (2005): In their Balanced Scorecard theory (BSC), they set four perspectives for firm’s performance measurement. These are internal business, innovation & learning, customer and financial perspective.
An organisation undergoing business process re-engineering, and during the transition to a Process-Centred organisation, beefs up and strengthens the first three components of BSC. Achieving the BPR objectives and other three components of the BSC will contribute indirectly to the financial performance, too.
Original High-level Principles, in Michael Hammer's (1990) article: "Re-engineering Work: Don’t Automate, Obliterate":
Organize around outcomes, not tasks.
Have those who use the output of the process, perform the process.
Subsume information-processing work into the real work that produces the information.
Treat geographically dispersed resources as though they were centralized.
Link parallel activities instead of integrating their results.
Put the decision point where the work is performed, and build control into the process.
Capture information once and at the source.
Refined, Detailed BPR Principles by Hammer (1996), Hammer & Champy (1993), and Davenport (1993):
Distinguish between Value-Adding, Non-Value-Adding and Waste activities. Try to obliterate non-value-adding and waste activities.
Simplify and annihilate processes, so to reduce cycle-time and cost.
Keep only these processes that will add more value than if they were outsourced.
Set out-of-reach, not out-of-sight targets.
Re-think functions and processes.
Use IT as an enabler.
Empower people and consider employees as process-performers, professionals. Reverse the Industrial Revolution, which decomposed process into tasks resulting in employee de-skilling.
Each process should be customer-focused.
Use benchmarking against “best of breed” in their industry.
And above all – challenge outdated organizational principles, question fundamental assumptions and underlying operations.
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Hammer (1996); Davenport (1993): "The availability of new technologies can enable the organizational re-invention, while unavailability or pre-mature technologies can be a high barrier for any innovation implementation."
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Crabtree, Rouncefield, & Tolmie (2001): “BPR offers one potential and increasingly influential solution to the requirements problem in software engineering by focusing on core processes.”
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Leonard-Barton (1988): “Because technology will never exactly fit the user environment, there is always a need for a carefully managed 'beta site', i.e., experimental introduction into the user environment with the intent to learn.”.
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Read an M.B.A. dissertation by Bar, Ezra (2002), entitled: Business Process Reengineering and Information Technology in the Clinical Research CRO Business
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Hammer (1996): "Re-engineering is a Radical Organisational Transformation, whereas TQM implies an Incremental Redesign."
Other practitioners argue that BPR can be organization-wide planned, yet implemented incrementally, in a piecemeal manner, rather than in one-step.
When a BPR initiative includes both Processes and new IT, a one-step approach involves extremely high risk of failure; whereas process change and IT change could be, each, relatively small-in-scale, incremental re-engineering, together they evolve to a radical process and IT re-engineering.There is a limit to the capabilities of people to absorb changes; so coping with organizational changes, new processes and procedures, and learning to operate new IT may become way too much stress to overcome.
suggests implementing its ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system first, and only then to undertake process improvements...
& The Balanced Scorecard adopt the incremental view, focusing on one process at a time. However, the first process that is selected as a pilot should be the one with the greatest improvement possible; that will provide the incentives to other employees to join the success.
From the knowledge and learning point of view: "Process improvement does not try to change the way processes are currently performed, but make them more efficient. Reengineering efforts do not improve what is already done; rather, they question the assumptions behind what is currently done to come up with potentially very different ways of executing the same tasks." (Davila, Epstein, & Shelton, 2005)
DMAIC - process improvement
Define: Define the project goals and customer (internal and external) deliverables
Measure: Measure the process to determine current performance
Analyze: Analyze and determine the root cause(s) of the defects
Improve: Improve the process by eliminating defects
Control: Control future process performance
DMADV - process design/ redesign:
Define: Define the project goals and customer (internal and external) deliverables
Measure: Measure and determine customer needs and specifications
Analyze: Analyze the process options to meet the customer needs
Design: Design (detailed) the process to meet the customer needs
Verify: Verify the design performance and ability to meet customer needs
SPC & Cpk - Statistical Process Control & Process Capability:
Statistical Process Control is the application of statistical methods to identify and control the special cause of variation in a process.
Process Capability Index is the ratio between permissible deviation, measured from the mean value to the nearest specific limit of acceptability, and the actual one-sided 3 x sigma spread of the process.Read: To Use DMEDI or to Use DMAIC? That is the Question (Jones, S. H,, 2006)
Read: Six Sigma Handbook
Delight customer by providing:
High Speed response
High Quality of products and services
Improve processes, aiming at:
Process flow streamlining
Low rate of Defects and Variations
Real Teamwork
Rely on Data and Facts
Read: Lean Six Sigma for Service.
Kaplan and Norton (2005) developed in the early 1990s a method for a comprehensive measurement of a firm's performance, based on four perspectives, and named Balanced Scorecard (BSC).
Internal business perspective refers to evaluation of firm's business processes - effectiveness and efficiency. Firm's quality, safety, maintenance, marketing, and communication to prospective customers are evaluated. Its internal policies, activities, procedures, and processes are assessed against the strategic proposed outcome.
Innovation & learning perspective measures the firm's organisational capacity to cope with the fast changing business and technical environment. Employees and other staff are measured for their skills, their level of knowledge, and their competencies to fulfil their roles, as well as their leadership skills. Firm's culture is checked for ability to promote the organisational mission and vision.
Customer perspective evaluates the extent to which the concerns of firm's key stakeholders, and in particular its customers' expectations, are met. This perspective measures the effectiveness of achieving the organisational mission.
Financial perspective measures the firm's financial state against its financial goals and concerns. That includes planned budget vs. expenses, overheads, and fund balances - among others.
Requirements for the Balanced Scorecard are derived from the firm's organisational mission ("high level purpose"), vision ("desired end-state"), and the developed strategy map ("the methodology for achieving that end-state").
By measuring the short-term outputs against desired levels and industry benchmarks, the firm can achieve its long-term, strategic outcomes, as articulated in its mission statement.
The U.S. Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, and the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) can be perceived as implementation of the Balanced Scorecards; in the process of pursuing the award, the firm evaluates and measures its strengths and weaknesses in many different areas, as it is done for BSC.
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Drucker (1998): “Innovation is the effort to create purposeful focused change in an enterprise's economic or social potential”.
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Donofrio (2002): “We [IBM] define innovation as our ability to create new value at the intersection of business and technology." (Nick Donofrio, lead researcher at IBM).
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Tidd, Bessant, & Pavitt (2005): “A successful innovation is a process of turning opportunities into new ideas and of putting these into widely used practice.”
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Hickey (2002): “Our goal is to find ways to make our products non-commodities through added-value and through differentiation - through innovation... Incremental innovation is like a preventative medicine for a deadly disease - commoditization." (William Hickey, CEO & president of Sealed Air Corporation).
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Davila, Epstein, & Shelton (2005); "Innovation is a necessary ingredient for sustained success - it protects the company's tangible and intangible assets against the erosion of the market." "Innovation is an integral part of the business, and as such it has to be managed - it is not a 'nice-to-have' element, or something that occurs on itself."
Read our white papers on Innovation Process and Change Management
Crabtree, A.., Rouncefield, M., & Tolmie, P. (2001, Jul/Sep). There’s something else missing here: BPR and the requirements process. Knowledge and Process Management.. 8 (3),164-174.
Davenport, T. H. (1993). Process innovation: Reengineering work through information technology. Boston: Harvard Business Press.
Davenport, T. H. & Short, J. E. (1990, Summer). The new industrial engineering: Information technology and business process redesign. Sloan Management Review, 31(4), 11-27.
Davila, T., Epstein, M.J., & Sheldon, R.(2005). Making innovation work: How to manage it, measure it, and profit from it. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Warton School Publishing.
Drucker, P F. (1998, Nov/Dec). The discipline of innovation. Harvard Business Review, 76(6), 149-155.
George, M. L. (2003). Lean Six Sigma for service: How to user lean speed and Six Sigma quality to improve services and transactions. New York: McGraw-Hill
Hammer, M. (1990, July-August). Re-engineering work: Don’t automate, obliterate. Harvard Business Review, 68(4), 104-112.
Hammer, M. (1996). Beyond reengineering: How the process-centred organisation is changing our work and our lives. New York: Harper Collins.
Hammer, M. & Champy, J. (1993). Reengineering the corporation: A manifesto for business revolution. New York: Harper Collins.
Hewitt, F. & Yeon, K. H. (1996). BPR perceptions, practices and expectations – A UK study. Business Change and Re-engineering, 3(3), 47-55.
Kaplan, S. R. & Norton, D. P.(2005, Jul-Aug). The Balanced Scorecard – Measures that drive performance. Harvard Business Review, 83(7), 172-180.
Leonard-Barton, D. (1988). Implementation as mutual adaptation of technology and organisation. Research Policy 17, 251-267.
Niven, P. R. (2003). Balanced Scorecard step-by-step for government and nonprofit agencies. Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons.
Parker, J. (1993, May). An ABC guide to business process reengineering. Industrial Engineering, 25(5), 52-53.
Pysdek, T. (2003). The Six Sigma handbook: Revised and expanded: The complete guide for Greenbelts, Blackbelts, and managers at all levels. New York: McGraw-Hill
Tidd, J., Bessant, J, & Pavitt, K.(2005). Managing innovation: Integrating technological, market, and organizational change (3rd ed.). Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons.
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