Premium Essay

Reengineering Work

In: Computers and Technology

Submitted By gursharan
Words 615
Pages 3
REENGINEERING WORK
Many companies in U.S still don’t use the concept of reengineering accurately. This happens because they somehow lack in terms of analyzing their current business strategy and implement the new Information Technology which doesn’t support the current situation and they end up with failures. Many of the companies started before the advent of computers and their systems, processes and organizational structures are very different from today’s era. Even form the past decade or so consumer demands for the goods and services has also grown on much higher scale. So for the companies to enhance their performance they should reengineer their business processes and to get a competitive advantage they must closely look at their processes that are existing. Reengineering refers to rethinking and redesigning i.e. finding new and innovative ways of making business processes to accomplish improvements in the areas of cost, speed, quality and Service.
The top companies that are considered in this case are Ford and Mutual benefit Life. Both these companies have reengineered their process and have achieved competitive advantage by doing so. Ford analyzed their processes at every department to optimize their costs and resources with improving on quality and service. They found that they need to look into accounts payable department to improvise its productivity and optimize the cost and resources. In their existing system employees spent most of their time in mismatches and cross checking the invoices which resulted in delay in the whole process. To improve this they came up with online database where all the records can be saved on one platform which is shared. By implementing this Ford achieved 75% reduction in headcount, more accurate information and simple, shared and linked process.
The MBL (Mutual Benefit Life) company also reengineered its processing of

Similar Documents

Free Essay

A Study of Job Analysis and Design in Mobile Network Operators of the Telecommunications Industry in Bangladesh 

... Research Methodology Primary Sources  Questionnaire Secondary Sources  Journals  Research Papers  Internet    Limitations Limitations  Only one official from each company was interviewed  Difficult to contact HR managers due to their work schedules  Hesitant to provide information due to their confidential nature  Difficult to assess reliability as based mainly on interviews   Job Analysis and Design Job Analysis: Importance & Purpose  Primary task for setting a baseline for each job  Enables HR professionals to effectively manage job-related activities  Systematic approach to defining the job role, description, requirements, responsibilities, evaluation, etc.  Legal validation of employment decisions  Defines duties & tasks  Identifies reporting relationships  Basis for determining relative worth of jobs  Identifies redundancy Job Design  Refers to the way that a set of tasks, or an entire job, is organized  Takes into account factors that affect the work  Organizes the content and tasks to improve the efficiency of the business and improve employee satisfaction Job design involves administrative areas such as: 1.Job rotation 2.Job enlargement 3.Task/machine pacing 4.Work breaks and working hours Industry Background Industry Background...

Words: 1114 - Pages: 5

Free Essay

Leadership

...identifying four interrelated dimensions of teamwork effectiveness: attitudinal, behavioural, operational and financial. The first two represent transmission mechanisms by which organizational performance can be improved. The latter two provide direct measures of organizational outcomes. The review shows that teamworking has a positive impact on all four dimensions of performance. It also reveals that, when teamwork is combined with structural change, performance can be further enhanced. The paper concludes by highlighting some important research gaps that future studies could address. Introduction Teamwork has emerged in recent years as one of the most important ways in which work is being reorganized (Osterman 1994; Waterson et al. 1997). This idea of delegating responsibilities to work groups has been diffused under a range of different labels. Human resource management (HRM), modern sociotechnical theory, business process re-engineering and lean production all embrace the core principles of teamworking (Benders and Van Hootegem 1999; De Sitter et al. 1997; Kleinschmidt and Pekruhl 1994; Kuipers and Van...

Words: 11643 - Pages: 47

Premium Essay

Michael Hammer Summary

...Michael Hammer’s “Reengineering Work: Don’t Automate, Obliterate” is an article on the problems and some solutions businesses used to overcome their issues of wasting time and money on inadequate operation processes. As businesses grow, the operation processes grow as well and the way the process is handled needs to change to accommodate the growth to be more efficient. If you just add more the current process without considering a new way to handle the process, you end up with a larger problem then you began with. What Hammer is trying to get across is that instead of adding to current processes, you need to eliminate them all together and create a new design for the process. This new design depending on the purpose of the business is to create a goal of having minimal wasted time and resources. This in turn eliminates chances to have failures. However, for a business to totally throw out their current process to start a new one, is not only challenging but also frowned upon by employees because most people not only do not like change but it could also eliminate their position in the company. Wasting time and money on inadequate operation processes, costs companies thousands of dollars and lots of time. If a company is having several jobs doing the same thing or having to reenter the same information, it becomes redundant and wasteful. The more efficient way to handle a situation like this is to make a centralized database that holds the information one person inputs...

Words: 1554 - Pages: 7

Premium Essay

Buyer Power

...low because the buyers have a lot of choices to shop in different shops. Threat of substitute products or services is high because you can order books online. In order to have competitive advantages I would try to use switching cost. I would offer my customers to order their books through the telephone or mail so I will deliver them the book free without any additional cost. Threat of new entrants is high because it is easy for new competitors to open a shop. It does not have any significant entry barriers. Rivalry among existing competitors is high because the bookshop market has fierce competition. Organizations typically follow one of the Porter’s three generic strategies. One of them is broad cost leadership strategy. This strategy works with broad market and provides low cost. For example, McDonalds or Wal-Mart. They should provide lowest possible cost...

Words: 506 - Pages: 3

Premium Essay

Pemm

...For the exclusive use of M. Wilcox, 2016. Harvard Business School 9-996-005 September 8, 1995 Order Management Reengineering at Heatway Allan Firestone, president of Heatway Corporation’s Industrial Products Division, sighed in frustration. Bob Hemphill, a vice president charged with designing and implementing a new process for selling and delivering Heatway products, had just left Firestone’s office in corporate headquarters, closing his door with more than the needed amount of force. They had finished an important meeting on implementation of the new process, called Proposal to Payment (PTP). PTP was a sweeping, radical change involving not only a new process, but also a new organizational structure, a new IT architecture, and even a new philosophy of business. Hemphill left the meeting upset because he had requested $35 million for the 1995 implementation of PTP. He felt that this amount was necessary if Heatway was to meet its objective of full implementation of PTP by 1997. Firestone, however, had told Hemphill that he had only $15 million to spend on PTP in 1995. Firestone wondered how he could get the money for PTP without sacrificing his profit objectives for the year. Could Corporate pay for the rest? Could some of the other international divisions that had expressed interest contribute? Though there was widespread support for the initiative, all the way up to Ralph Salada, Heatway’s chairman, Firestone doubted that the funds could easily be found. Firestone himself...

Words: 4260 - Pages: 18

Premium Essay

Student

...3-)(slayttan sonra)This definition is concerned with the following key elements: + fundamental rethinking + dramatic improvements + contemporary measures 4-)(slayttan önce)The other definition is belonging to Lowenthal (slayttan sonra)This definition is very similar to the one by Hammer and Champy, except that the changes on organizational structure are explicitly mentioned. The important elements are: + fundamental rethinking + core competencies + dramatic improvements 5-)(slayttan once)The last definition is belonging to Manganelli and Klein (slayttan sonra)The important element in this definition are: + rapid and radical + strategic and value-added processes + optimize 6-)(slayttaki tanımı okuduktan sonra) Activities: ◦ Input: captures raw data ◦ Processing: converts the input into more meaningful form ◦ Output transfers the processed information to people or activities where it will be used. ◦ Output to feedback to data evaluation to effective feedback. 7-)(slayttan önce)In some cases, processes are viewed as a set of subprocesses that in turn consist of tasks (i.e., activities). The main difference between a subprocess and a task is that a task has an owner while a subprocess may cut across functional boundaries. 8-)(önce slayttaki başlığı sonra burada yazanı oku) • Improvements in business processes have not kept up with improvements in production processes over the years. In other words, the margin for improvement is greater. • Waste...

Words: 1821 - Pages: 8

Premium Essay

Major Issues and Trends in O.M.

...MAJOR ISSUES AND TRENDS IN OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT I. COMPUTER AIDED MANUFACTURING/COMPUTER AIDED DESIGN * It is the use of computer software to control machine tools and related machinery in the manufacturing of workpieces. * It also refers to the use of a computer to assist in all operations of a manufacturing plant, including planning, management, transportation and storage. * Its primary purpose is to create a faster production process and components and tooling with more precise dimensions and material consistency, which in some cases, uses only the required amount of raw material (thus minimizing waste), while simultaneously reducing energy consumption. * It is a subsequent computer-aided process after computer-aided design (CAD) and sometimes computer-aided engineering (CAE), as the model generated in CAD and verified in CAE can be input into CAM software, which then controls the machine tool CAD / Computer-Aided Design Computer-aided design (CAD) is the use of computer programs to create two- or three-dimensional (2D or 3D) graphical representations of physical objects. CAD software may be specialized for specific applications. CAD is widely used for computer animation and special effects in movies, advertising, and other applications where the graphic design itself is the finished product. CAD is also used to design physical products in a wide range of industries, where the software performs calculations for determining an optimum shape...

Words: 2687 - Pages: 11

Premium Essay

Human Resources

...process reengineering: a survey Aston Business School, Aston University, Birmingham, UK Keywords BPR, Human resource management, Reward, Managers, Organizational structure, Teamwork Abstract Examines the relationship between business process re-engineering (BPR) and human resource management. A number of propositions relating to aspects of human resource management are derived from the literature, and examined by interviewing senior managers in UK organisations where business process re-engineering projects had either been completed or were still in progress. The propositions are analysed under four major headings: structure and culture, the role of managers, team working, and reward system. The conclusion is that BPR principles on the management of human resources as stated in the literature seem to find a full application in most of the organisations investigated. However, there were two exceptions to the expectations in the literature. The first was that there would be a change to a process-based structure; a change is seen in the majority of cases, but to a matrix style of organisation. The second was the implication that team-based reward systems would appear; this has only happened in a minority of cases. Overall, for the organisations studied which have undergone BPR, a very clear pattern emerges with respect to human resource management practices. Human resource management 325 Fabio Zucchi and John S. Edwards Introduction Business process reengineering (BPR)...

Words: 8510 - Pages: 35

Free Essay

Introduction to Business Systems Analysis Student Study Guide

...to be more structured and, as we will see in this section, current methods increasingly rely on the computer for support. We will first study the more traditional requirements determination methods and progress to more current methods for collecting system requirements. • Traditional and Modern methods for determining system requirements Traditional requirements determination methods include interviewing, using questionnaires, observing users in their work environment, and collecting procedures and other written documents. Modern requirements determination methods are led by the Joint Application Design (JAD) technique. Other new methods are based upon group support systems, computer-aided systems engineering (CASE) tools and prototyping. • Radical methods for determining system requirements In some organizations, management is looking for new ways to perform current tasks. These new ways may be radically different from how things are done now, but the payoffs may be enormous; fewer people may be needed to do the same work, relationships with customers may improve dramatically, and processes...

Words: 4098 - Pages: 17

Premium Essay

Leadership

...theory must fit one another. 3. The theory of the business must be known and understood throughout the company. 4. The theory of the business must be examined constantly. This paper aim to compare and contrast Drucker’s two powerful statements that can both sustain and endanger an entire organization. The paper also highlighted more research needed for Theory of the Business concept for more understanding about the theory of the business. The theory of the business must fit reality. Related to the first statement developed by Drucker, Hammer and Champy (1993) proposed the same assumptions that the discontinuous thinking and business reengineering are powerful twin objectives of every organization. Organization needs to adapt and aligne with changes in reality of the company's environment. “At the heart of business reengineering lies the notion of discontinuous thinking –identifying and abandoning the outdated rules and fundamental assumptions that underlie current business operations“(Hammer and Champy,...

Words: 1053 - Pages: 5

Premium Essay

Gm591

...Term Project Course: GM 591 Instructor: Dr. Charles W. Creamer Student: Evan T. Dickinson Submitted: December 11, 2010 INTRODUCTION STSCM Systems LLC, a public company with headquarters located in northern New Jersey, has been a leader in providing wireless data solutions since its formation in 1998. The company's primary focus is on delivering advanced wireless monitoring and control solutions for many industries with emphasis on refrigerated transport, railroad, and specialty freight. The company's current solutions are improving the efficiency and operations of refrigerated trailers, trucks, containers, railcars, general-purpose railcars, bulk-transport trailers, barges, generators, compressors, and oil-field equipment. STSCM's operations center, also located in northern New Jersey, manages wireless equipment deployed worldwide including North America, Australia, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. STSCM has become a successful leader in its marketplace by having developed the capability to define and specify solutions optimized for customers’ applications. The company provides vertically integrated technical resources including project management, engineering development, software, firmware, and hardware engineering and applications delivery using a highly qualified, experienced technical team. STSCM's solutions are flexible and adaptable for use by customers with information delivery accomplished using a variety of methods including internet, advanced...

Words: 3587 - Pages: 15

Premium Essay

Business Process Reengineering

...MIS5000 Business Process Reengineering Group 2 Bonifacio, Faye | Dy, Maria Christina | Lim, Alexander OBJECTIVE To understand the foundation of business processes, the groundwork of business process reengineering and the role IT in business process reengineering. ROAD MAP I. Business Process a. Definition b. Business Process Improvement II. Business Process Reengineering c. What? d. Why e. When? f. Who? g. How? h. Advantages and Benefits of BPR i. Critiques about BPR III. The Role of IT j. Relationship between IT and BPR k. Role of IT in Reengineering l. Importance of IT m. Role of CIOs n. Future Role of IT in BPR IV. Application of BPR I. BUSINESS PROCESS a. DEFINITION "If you have ever waited in line at the grocery store, you can appreciate the need for process improvement. In this case, the "process" is called the check-out process, and the purpose of the process is to pay for and bag your groceries. The process begins with you stepping into line, and ends with you receiving your receipt and leaving the store. You are the customer (you have the money and you have come to buy food), and the store is the supplier The process steps are the activities that you and the store personnel do to complete the transaction. In this simple example, we have described a business process. Imagine other business processes: ordering clothes from...

Words: 5510 - Pages: 23

Premium Essay

Pacific Bell: Centrex Reengineering

...I. INTRODUCTION Business process reengineering (BPR), a recently popularized management change strategy, promises radical improvements in the business processes of an organization. This paper describes and analyses one of Pacific Bell’s successful reengineering initiatives, the Centrex reengineering project. The reengineering project describes the redesign and rollout of the new order-fulfilment process for a flagship product at Pacific Bell, Centrex. Background In late 1990, Pacific Bell, a subsidiary of Pacific Telesis Group and one of the seven Regional Bell Operating Companies, initiated reengineering. Due to the advancements of technology, the competitive environment for regional Bell operating companies was becoming increasingly complex. In 1990, Pacific Bell's CEO and President announced a long-term initiative called Competitive Readiness. The initiative called for 3 "R"s: restructuring, refocusing, and reengineering: * Restructuring led to breaking the once monolithic company into seven decentralized regional business units that served customers within specified geographic regions; statewide business units which focused on public and corporate customers with points of service throughout the state; and a product and technology support group composed of product and systems technology that permeated all facets of the firm's operations. * The refocusing program led to organizing the firm's priorities and resources around vision, values, and bold goals. Bold...

Words: 1610 - Pages: 7

Premium Essay

Business Process Reengineering

... | | |2011 | | | | ROLE OF IT IN BPR Submitted By Abhinav Johnson (F09001) Table of Contents INTRODUCTION 4 RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN IT & BPR 6 IT Capabilities and Reengineering 6 Phase 1: before the process is designed (as an enabler) 7 Phase 2: while the process is being designed (as a facilitator) 9 Phase 3: after the design is complete (as an implementer) 13 ROLE OF IT IN REENGINEERING 16 Principles of Reengineering by Hammer 17 BPR – The Current focus in IT 20 Concept of Database 20 Data Mining: 20 Data Warehousing 21 STRATEGIC USES OF IT AND CRITICALITY OF IT 22 BPR TOOLS AND TECHNIQUES 23 The Nature of IT Support for BPR 23 Integrated Enterprise Models 24 Analysis 26 Software Functionality 28 New ways of building models 29 Communication and Visualization 30 Intended Users 30 Evaluation Criteria 31 Enterprise Models 31 Analysis 32 Visualization...

Words: 10980 - Pages: 44

Premium Essay

Accounting System Analysis & Design

...BKAS3063 ACCOUNTING SYSTEM ANALYSIS & DESIGN ANSWER FOR TUTORIAL 3 There are several methods that systems analysts use to determine requirements for a proposed system. The requirements gathering techniques can be categorized into traditional, modern, or radical. The traditional requirements gathering techniques are interviews, questionnaires, , and documents analysis. The modern requirements determination techniques include Joint Application Design (JAD), group support systems, prototyping, and CASE tools. Business Process Reengineering (BPR) is a radical method for determining system requirements. Each of these approaches has advantages and disadvantages to system implementation and operation. 1. Briefly describe systems analysis and the major activities that occur during this phase of the systems development life cycle. (4 Marks) Answer: Systems analysis involves determining how the current information system functions and assess what users would like to see in a new system. Requirements determination, requirements structuring, and alternative generation and selection are the three primary systems analysis activities. 2. Describe THREE (3) traditional techniques for collecting information during analysis. When might one be better than another? (6 Marks) Answer: Traditional techniques for collecting requirements include interviewing individuals, interviewing groups, observing users, and document and procedure...

Words: 689 - Pages: 3