Business Process Reengineering

Sine 1990s, a vigorous movement of corporation reengineering has being emerged in the United States and other developed countries. The movement has been developed as a result of increasingly fierce competitions in global market, the dominant position of customers and rapid advances in information technology. The traditional corporations without shifting according to the environment have been in great trouble. For this reason, corporations rethink fundamentally of the management and draw two conclusions: one is that the Adam Smith's theory of labor division should be criticized, the other is the adoption of TQM, The book written by Michael Hammer and James Champy is the milestone in the movement. The core concept of BPR is that the managers should rethink frequently of the business process to eliminate low efficient activities and achieve a dramatic improvement in processes so that customer requirements are met. BPR focuses on not only single process, but also the complex relationships among those major processes, such as operation management process, corporation work process, business process, in addition to this, the mutual coordination and promotion has been emphasized. The design of BPR relies on three factors: application of the information technology, the identification of customer needs and the creatively thinking based on understanding of them. The design would not succeed unless the corporations have implemented measures to meet those factors and mastered right methods. There are two essential approaches to the design of the corporation process: one is the systematic approach which means reengineering the present processes through eliminating, simplifying, integrating and automating. The other is innovative design which means abounding all the potential assumptions and redesigning the processes according the objective. There are vast differences between process-oriented corporations and traditional corporations. The traditional business firm was-and still is -a hierarchical, centralized, structured arrangement of specialists that typically relies on a fixed set of standard operating procedures to deliver a mass-produced product (or service). The new style of business firm is a flattened ( less hierarchical), decentralized, flexible arrangement of generalists who rely on nearly instant information to deliver mass-customized products and services uniquely suited to specific markets or customers. The differences mentioned above originates from the transformation from the organization of single function to the organizations which are beneficial to lateral working ties.The BPR is a vast systematic project, which tales at least five years according to Michael Porter. Therefor, proper strategy and disciplined process are also imperative to reengineer the corporations successfully. This thesis applies theory of BPR through the case of reengineering product development process of Sliver Plan of IBM. Since 1997, corporations in our countries have been in an external environment like western corporations in 1980's, so the theory and practices of BRP in the developed countries provide beneficial experiences for corporation in our country.