Week 6 – Basics of BPR (2)

Source / Reference:

1.     Chung For Choi, Stephen L. Chan, (1997) "Business process re-engineering: evocation,

elucidation and exploration", Business Process Management Journal, Vol. 3 Iss: 1, pp.39 – 63

2.     Business Process Regineering

http://www.brighthub.com/office/project-management/articles/122495.aspx

3.     R. D. Reid, M. R. Sanders (2005), "Operations Management: An Integrated Approach"

http://www.wiley.com/college/sc/reid/chap5.pdf

4.     Sims, Serbrenia J. & Sims, Ronald R. (no date). Total Quality Management in Higher Education. Retrieved February 10, 2009 from http://books.google.com/books?id=I5tBi3EJNfYC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_summary_r&cad=0#PPA2,M1

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Response:

This chapter we further study the concept about BPR. This time, I would like to give a short summary first and then go in depth on some topics. At the end, I will sum up the properties of TQM and BPR by comparing each other. So today, this post will include:

1.    Summary on lecture notes:

-          The Leavitt Diamond

-          Total Quality Management(TQM)

2.    Comparison on TQM v BPR

3.    Conclusion

This week, we’ve learnt how to balancing IT-enabled organization transformation by using a conceptual framework – The Leavitt Diamond.

The Leavitt Diamond

                                                                          Figure 1

1.    Information Technology use

2.    Business processes

3.    Requisite people skills

4.    Organizational form

On a whole, four components, listed above, are inter-dependent when implement change. When a component changes, adjustment will consequently be made for the rest.

Take People as an example, when we use this approach, we don’t just look at employees’ position, but also their skills, efficiency knowledge and productivity. The change in people might affect the other three components:

·         Change in Tasks: Changes in how things are done. If you’re planning to change the tasks, you will have to educate and train the employees to make them familiar with the new methods.

·         Change in Structure: Change in structure would imply changing job roles. Here again the employees would need help to learn about their new job duties and responsibilities.

·         Change in Technology: Shifting to a new technology requires extensive training, so that the employees can handle the new technology efficiently – without causing any damage to themselves or the technology. This may even involve hiring new skilled employees to handle the new technology.

Total Quality Management

The second concept we’ve learnt is TQM. This is a management approach for an organization that focuses on customer satisfaction in terms of continual improvement of the quality of its products and services.

TQM is composed of three paradigms:

Paradigms	Description
Total	Involving the entire organization, supply chain, product life cycle
Quality	With all-rounded quality, service quality, resource quality
Management	System managing steps like: plan, organize, control, lead, staff

TQM stresses that quality is an organization effort. And the Walt Disney Company is a great example for TQM.

The Walt Disney Company focuses on customer satisfaction. This is accomplished through meticulous attention to every detail, with particular focus on the role of employees in service delivery. Employees are viewed as the most important organizational resource and great care is taken in employee hiring and training. All employees are called “cast members,” regardless of whether they are janitors or performers. Employees are extensively trained in customer service, communication, and quality awareness. Continual monitoring of quality is considered important, and employees meet regularly in teams to evaluate their effectiveness. All employees are shown how the quality of their individual jobs contributes to the success of the park.

Another example is Kroger Company which is a good example for TQM in quality control.

Kroger Company record and monitor the quality of incoming produce, such as tomatoes and lettuce by using quality control tools. Quality tools can be used to evaluate the acceptability of product quality and to monitor product quality from individual suppliers. They can also be used to evaluate causes of quality problems, such as long transit time or poor refrigeration.

TQM v BPR

Figure 2

From the figure 2, the differences between TQM and BPR are shown. As you can see, the main differences for them are threefold:

1.    Focus

2.    Objective

3.    Benefit gained

Figure 2

Figure 3

In fact, they are two management approaches that business implements them in different situations where they focus on different objectives. Look at the life cycle from Distant communication (Figure 3). TQM and BPR are inter-exchanging alternatingly.

In conclusion, BPR and TQM are both important for business. Although they aim at different objective and focus, as you see in life cycle, TQM and BPR are alternating, which highlights the importance of both approaches in life cycle. However, to implement these two approaches, we cannot guarantee that business can be success or not as the tactics and methodology for them might affect the result which will be discuss in next post.