2012年3月31日 星期六

Week 10 - process redesign

Lecture 10 mainly focused on the third phase of Business Process Re-engineering, i.e., the phase of process redesign.
There are 3 ways of redesign has been introduced:
restructuring the process
informating the process
minding the process


Particularly for restructuring, there are 4 principles discussed in the lecture. They are,
Lose wait
Orchestrate
Mass- Customize
Synchronize


In this blog, I would like to share a case on business process redesign which demonstrate the principle of "Lose Wait", i.e., to reduce process time in process links to create value. It is discussed in the paper Business Process Redesign for Effective E-commerce.


It's about the story that the Dutch local government which was in the process of supporting all their processes with workflow management technology. There are a few steps they have done in BPR. For the part of parallelism, it opens possibilities for lead time reduction.

2012年3月10日 星期六

Week 7 – BPR Methodologies

Reference:
1) http://www.prosci.com/bpr_method.htm
2) Development of Business Process Reengineering Methodology for a Commercial Airline - Ayed T. Al-Amri
3) Business Process Reengineering: A Consolidated Methodology - Subramanian Muthu, Larry Whitman, and S. Hossein Cheraghi
4) Critical review of existing BPR methodologies, the need for a holistic approach - George Valiris, Michalis Glykas
5) Redesigning Enterprise Processes for e-Business, O. A. EI Sawy

Subject: Critical review in BPR methodologies
We have learnt Business process reengineering for weeks. BPR has lots of approach. Therefore, setting up methodologies is important in BPR to address each of the phases in BPR. Methodologies aim at improving what already exists in the organization usually by eliminating non value added activities in order to achieve lower throughput times and best re-allocation of resources.

The general methodology taught in lecture consists of 5 typical phrases:
1. Triggering & executive visioning
2. BPR Project mobilization
3. Process redesign
4. Implementation & organizational transformation
5. Monitoring & maintaining


In my opinion, the choice of technologies and methods within each phrase and the degree of relative emphasis of various aspects of phrases is contingent upon the context of BPR, such as the scope and depth of the BPR project, the nature of the organizational infrastructure, and the nature of the process.


Real-life example
According to "Development of Business Process Reengineering Methodology for a Commercial Airline", it uses two companies for case study to investigate and analyze their BPR methodologies, so as to propose a BPR methodology model for another commercial airline.

American Airlines (AA)


Saudi Arabian Airlines (Saudia)

Comparison of the AA and Saudia BPR methodologies

From the analysis of the two picked airline companies, American and Saudia Airlines, we can see that the BPR methodologies of the two companies are not the same, with different focuses in the BPR. AA focuses on the "Initiation" phrase while Saudia emphasized on the "Redesign" phrase.

From my point of view, I think that the generic model for BPR methodologies should be used for reference only, in order to customize a suitable BPR methodology for an organization so that it can meet the unique requirements and needs, and match with the visions of the organizations. Besides, it can take into account the current business position and situation of the organization.