Business process re-engineering. New applications for the techniques of production engineering

This paper assesses the rise of business process re-engineering (BPR) as a new approach to managing and organising work. Organizations wishing to implement BPR may either choose a set of generic business processes or devise a set of processes specific to their own situation. An approach to developing enterprise specific business processes is then proposed, based on an analogy with the introduction of group technology to manufacturing organisations. The techniques used by production engineers to implement group technology are reviewed and amended for use in a BPR context. A new methodology for information flow analysis is described and a short case study presented where the methodology has been applied. The paper concludes that re-discovering the techniques used by production engineers is a useful starting point for those considering a BPR project.