مهندسی مجدد فرآیند کسب و کار : رویکردی برای نقشه برداری فرآیند

The goal of business process reengineering (BPR) is to achieve dramatic improvements in business measures of performance by radically changing the process design. This paper provides a structural definition of the redesign search space using the number of employee types and the number of activities. A systematic approach that combines some linear programming tools with unique BPR principles is then proposed to support the technical redesign of the current process. The approach is illustrated using a public firm process.

Business process reengineering (BPR) 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” [1, p. 32]. Developing a radical design is a twofold challenge; a sociocultural challenge and a technical challenge [2, p. 132–92]. The sociocultural challenge results from the severity of organizational changes that typically accompany successful implementation of BPR projects [3]; they include changing the work unit from departments and functions to process teams, the work scope from functional or departmental to cross-functional, the job from simple tasks to multidimensional work, the people role from controlled to empowered, the job preparation focus from training only to training and education, the reward system from activity-based to result-based and the organization structure from hierarchical to flat [1, p. 65–82]. The technical challenge is due to the difficulty of developing a process design that differs radically from the current design. There are ground rules for developing radical designs; e.g. start from a clean slate, take a fresh look, start from scratch, start all over, abandon outdated rules, question fundamental assumptions, ask basic questions, think outside the box, design with no prior constraints, redesign where there are no sacred cows and investigate new paradigms. More specific redesign guidelines are: minimize process decomposition, consolidate activities, allow employees who process the job to deliver it as well, redesign for single-source data entry and redesign for common databases that are remotely accessed through networking [4]. At the level of the process design structure (i.e. process map), however, the most widely used technique is observational analysis (OA). The OA technique, which primarily entails altering the process structure via inspection, is normally used after mapping the current process with a graphical representation tool; e.g. the structured analysis and design technique (SADT) [5] and [6] and the SADT-based functional and process techniques of integrated computer-aided manufacturing. Notable examples of SADT-based techniques are IDEF0 and IDEF3 [7], [8] and [9]. The OA technique has a set of options to redesign a process that includes eliminating non-value-added activities (e.g. redundant, rework and supervisory activities), simplifying activities, combining activities, increasing the concurrency of activities and automating activities [9]. Value analysis (VA) is sometimes used with OA to numerically assess the relative utility of each activity using a time, cost and value criteria [10]. In addition, simulation techniques are frequently used to evaluate the dynamic behavior of alternative designs. Based on the premise that the redesigning effort can be supported by some knowledge or sense regarding what generally constitutes a structurally ideal design [11], this paper proposes an approach that formalizes process mapping by altering the process structure as a whole based on the BPR conception of a structurally ideal design. Employee-empowerment is required in reengineering so the employee, in the ideal sense, may take charge of the whole process from end-to-end [4]. However, for an employee to handle the processing of additional activities, comprehensive training and education are required, as Hall et al. [3] noted, based on a research into reengineering projects in more than 100 companies. These education/training requirements are used as input to the proposed approach. In the first step of the approach, the current process map is streamlined using OA/VA. The result is a process map with only necessary activities remaining. For the purpose of this research, an activity is defined to be a set of operations commonly performed by a single employee type without forced interruptions, and an employee type is defined to be a class of employees who are responsible for carrying out the same activities in the process. After eliminating non-value-added activities, an LP algorithm is used to combine activities by minimizing the training and education requirements for a target number of employee types. Combined activities define a new process map with some empowered, retained employee types who have some activities added to the ones they originally had in the current process. Another LP algorithm is used to redistribute employees from eliminated employee types over the retained employee types in order to balance the new process map. Alternative process designs may then be developed by considering other design dimensions; e.g. managerial, organizational and operational. Fig. 1 provides an IDEF0 model of the proposed approach to show the input(s), output(s), control(s) and mechanism(s) of its major steps. A case example of a public firm is provided to illustrate the approach.

An approach to introduce structure in the highly unstructured BPR process of redesign was presented in this paper. The approach is based on structurally defining a process design via activities and employee types and using LP models to guide the search for candidate process maps. Application of the proposed approach was demonstrated through a case example of a public firm process. The following are important remarks on the approach: 1. The time estimates for enabling employee types to perform other activities may be based on the current qualifications of the employee type, the educational background, experience and skills required to perform the new activity, as well as the degree of similarity between the new activity and activities currently performed by the employee type. 2. Time estimates, as well as aggregate functions of time, cost and any other relevant measure, may be used as entries in the E–A matrix to quantify the enabling of an employee type i to perform activity j. 3. The approach allows the process of searching for alternative process maps to proceed in a systematic manner. This is due to the structural definition of the search space using the number of employee types and activities and the utilization of some LP models. The approach supports the two redesign strategies of aggregation and decomposition [12]. The aggregation strategy occurs when the approach is used with ascending p values; whereas, the decomposition strategy results when the approach is used with descending p values. 4. To minimize constraints on developing alternative process maps and support fresh thinking, the implementation feasibility of alternative process maps is assessed after the design structure parameters of activities and employee types are determined, as recommended by Davenport and Stoddard [13] and Fuglseth and Gronhaug [14]. 5. Should there be a need to introduce a new activity, as a result of OA/VA or as a result of evaluation of a developed process map, then the activity is included in the E–A matrix with non-zero entries for all employee types, reflecting the cost of qualifying them for the new activity. On the other hand, if the current employee types could not be trained for the new activity, a new employee type is introduced in the E–A matrix with entries reflecting the cost of qualifying him/her for existing activities. It is important to emphasize that the proposed approach constitutes a part of a larger scheme of a process reengineering methodology. For example, the proposed approach may be used as part of the technical design solution stage in the rapid reengineering methodology of Manganelli and Klein [2] to formally generate alternative process maps after the application of the OA/VA technique. It is also important to mention that the proposed approach does not guarantee an optimum redesign as it derives alternative process maps starting from the current process map. In some instances, the optimum redesign is one that is completely different and has no grounding in the original process map. Research is currently conducted to assess, using case studies, the utility of the proposed approach in developing effective process maps. Future research may explore the implication of extending the proposed approach to the concurrent reengineering of business processes. In this case the approach may be used to redesign more than one process at-a-time by mapping all the processes as in step 1, then applying the remaining steps without change. This simultaneous redesign of processes increases the likelihood of developing radical designs; an employee type who currently performs activities in a given process may be assigned to activities belonging to other processes in the new cross-process design structures. Such design structures are likely to lead to other changes at the organizational level; hence, they further increase the probability of reaping the full benefits of reengineering [3]. Another area of future research is developing an algorithm that allows the analyst to explore alternative process maps at the same k value instead of only considering the process map that minimizes total training time. Such an algorithm may be valuable, especially if the increase in total training time is insignificant.