Explaining business process reengineering

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Business Process Reengineering is a discipline in which extensive research has been carried out and numerous methodologies churned out. But what seems to be lacking is a structured approach. In this paper we provide a review of BPR and present 'best of breed ' methodologies from contemporary literature and introduce a consolidated, systematic approach to the redesign of a business enterprise. The methodology includes the five activities: Prepare for reengineering, Map and Analyze As-Is process, Design To-be process, Implement reengineered process and Improve continuously.

In today's ever-changing world, the only thing that doesn't change is 'change' itself. In a world increasingly driven by the three Cs: Customer, Competition and Change, companies are on the lookout for new solutions for their business problems. Recently, some of the more successful business corporations in the world seem to have hit upon an incredible solution: Business Process Reengineering (BPR).

Some of the recent headlines in the popular press read, "Wal-Mart reduces restocking time from six weeks to thirty-six hours."" Hewlett Packard's assembly time for server computers touches new low- four minutes." "Taco Bell's sales soar from $500 million to $3 billion." The reason behind these success stories: Business Process Reengineering!

"Reengineering is 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." The key words in the preceding definition are the italicized ones.

BPR advocates that enterprises go back to the basics and reexamine their very roots. It doesn't believe in small improvements. Rather it aims at total reinvention. As for results: BPR is clearly not for companies who want a 10% improvement. It is for the ones that need a ten-fold increase. The last but the most important of the four key words is the word-'process.' BPR focuses on processes and not on tasks, jobs or people. It endeavors to redesign the strategic and value added processes that transcend organizational boundaries.

Consolidated Methodology:

A consolidated methodology has been developed from the five methodologies previously presented and an IDEF0 model was developed to provide a structured approach and to facilitate understanding. But for the sake of brevity, we have shown only the major activities. In the ensuing section, we deal with the details of our methodology.

Prepare for Reengineering:

"If you fail to plan, you plan to fail". Planning and Preparation are vital factors for any activity or event to
be successful, and reengineering is no exception. Before attempting reengineering, the question 'Is BPR necessary?' should be asked? There should be a significant need for the process to be reengineered. The justification of this need marks the beginning of the Preparation ...