What is Reengineering or Business Process Reenigneering?

Reengineering sometimes called Business Process Reengineering (BPR), involves a complete rethinking and transformation of key business processes, leading to strong horizontal coordination and greater flexibility in responding to changes in environment. Because work is originated around processes rather than function, reengineering often involves a shift to horizontal structure based on teams.

Reengineering basically means starting over–throwing out all the notions of how work was done and deciding how it can best be done now. It requires identifying customer needs and them designing how it can best be done now. It requires identifying customer needs then designing processes and aligning people to meet those needs.

Banks and insurance companies, manufacturing and mining companies, and service companies throughout the world, all have achieved breakthroughs in speed, flexibility, innovation and quality through reengineering.

Source: Management by Danny Samson and Richard L. Daft.

How Reengineering approach to quality is different from TQM?

It is very important to understand that Reengineering is not a separate discipline. It  is, in fact, a subset of TQM.  The essential difference between (Business Process) Reengineering and TQM is that reengineering aims at quantum gains on the order of 30 to 50 percent or more, whereas Total Quality Management programs stress incremental progress, striving for inch-by-inch gains again and again.

The two approaches to improve performance are not mutually exclusive; it makes sense to use them in tandem. Reengineering  can be used to first produce good basic design that dramatically improves a business process. Total quality programs can be used to work out bugs, perfect the processes, and gradually improve both efficient and effectiveness.

Such two-pronged approach to implementing organizational and strategic change is like a marathon race where you run fast four laps as fast as you can, then gradually pick up speed the remainder of the way.

Source: Strategic Management, 10 the Edition by Thmpson Strikeland

Productivity, Quality and Business Process Reengineering

Some questions about relationship of quality and productivity

Are productivity and quality related?
Are they two sides of the coin?
Can you have both?

The answer is YES

The productivity has come to mean more output for the same or less cost. Productivity has become a tactical short-term approach associated with the cost reduction, greater efficiency, better use of resources, and organizational restructuring.

Some misconceptions about relations of productivity and quality

Despite a growing body of evidence that indicates a positive correlation, the misconception exists that productivity and cost must be sacrificed if quality is to improve.

There may be some justification for the belief that increased quality means decreased productivity, but it seems to be the view of those who rank production ahead of quality as a top priority.

It is argued that a program to improve quality causes disruptions and delay result in reduced output

Reengineering/Business Process Reengineering

According to the authors of the book, “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.

Reengineering is done by analyzing and redesigning of workflow within and between enterprises.  engineering reached its heyday in the early 1990’s when Michael Hammer and James Champy published their best-selling book, “Reengineering the Corporation”

The authors promoted the idea that sometimes radical redesign and reorganization of an enterprise (wiping the slate clean) was necessary to lower costs and increase quality of service.