Business Reengineering is used to design new processes by revising outdated existing procedures and policies that have become standard operating procedures with little or no modification or updates for significant periods of time. This is the complete opposite effect you would expect to see in Lean organizations. Nevertheless, Business Process Reengineering is a great opportunity for improvement when you notice a key process is ineffective. It gives you the opportunity to start over using new ideas and with modern perspectives. Tips to ensure your reengineering efforts go smoothly include:
Having the end users of the output perform the process to gain full understanding of the applications and steps involved to reengineer it right.
Engineer around your desired outcomes rather than individual tasks. Determine your goal and work backwards rather than performing an analysis on each step. You may find some of the steps are no longer needed so there is no need to edit or modify a task.
Operate in the context of new technology. Information and resources that may have historically been geographically dispersed may now function more centralized and with greater efficiency.
Enjoy the improvement and enjoy the summer.
Integrate activities as they occur either in tandem or parallel rather than collectively integrating the results of the process. Integrating can occur through communication as the process is driven rather than an additional step of final integration.
Allow the process users to control and modify the process while their work occurs and allow them to develop their own controls.
Properly managed you will find improved quality, productivity, and cost savings. Along the way be sure monitor reengineering project duration and employee effort as part of your cost savings calculations.