Reengineering is another type of continuous improvement. It is also known as process redesign. Through reengineering, an organization can dramatically improve the quality and speed of work and reduce its cost by fundamentally changing the processes by which work gets done.
Reengineering is often used when the improvements needed are more significant and no incremental change in operation works. If a 10 percent improvement can be achieved by tinkering, then a 50 percent improvement calls for process redesign.
The satire of reengineering is that once the new process is in place, people often feel that the new way of operating is so much better that they should have thought of it long ago. Another common reaction is, “Why did we ever do it like that in the first place?” The answer is, “That’s the way we’ve always done it.”
How Reengineering Works?
Reengineering involves redesigning the operations of organizations to avoid bottlenecks and arid duplication of effort. In the traditional system, pieces of related activities in a business process are performed in various departments.
However, in reengineering, work efforts are redesigned in such a way that all pieces of related activities are performed by relevant employees in a group.
All relevant people are grouped together, and they are asked to perform the tasks in the whole process. The activities are not allowed to be performed in separate departments.
A telephone company in the private sector was tremendously successful in reengineering bureaucratic procedures in the company. The company pulled workers who performed related activities in various departments and then put them in teams to handle customer requests of recurring nature.
If the business processes are properly reengineered, organizations can expect to gain efficiency, reduce waste and achieve greater coordination among functions.
The notable difference between benchmarking and reengineering is that the former tries to adopt or adapt a best-in-class process of hiring another partnering organization without devoting time and resources for designing a new process or designing a duplicate of the superior process. In contrast, the latter tries to design a new process in its entirety.
Thus, reengineering is time-consuming and expensive, and at the same time, the organization may not have the desired competitive process even after spending so much time and resources.
For this reason, an organization should seriously think about not going for reengineering if there is a scope for benchmarking. In the USA, in particular, many trade associations and special interest organizations are how providing databases on best practices, process reengineering, and TQM online.
Principles of Reengineering
For any effective process, waste is the enemy.
Reducing waste is vital for any kind of endeavor, encompassing both TQ and JIT practices. It is a central theme of Japanese manufacturing management.
Poor processes waste time, money, material, effort, and the company’s goodwill. Redesigning processes to reduce waste is more an art than a science.
Every process redesign is unique, but there are some general principles for redesigning processes. These include:
Reduce Handoffs
Every time a process is handed from one person or group to another, errors may occur. Time is often wasted when one waits for the other to finish or needs to consult with the first group before continuing. Redesigning the process demands that no one will waste time or cause delays for others.
The process should be designed so that every individual or group can complete its own job within the specified time.
Eliminate Steps
In some organizations, there are steps in the process that neither add any value to the product nor service nor make the products attractive to the customers.
Such steps should be eliminated from the process. In manufacturing organizations, moving, storing, and inspecting products rarely add value and should be eliminated wherever possible. It is the best way to save time in producing products.
Perform Steps in Parallel Rather than in Sequence
This is another principle of redesigning the process where more than one task will be done at the same time so that the total time to complete the work will be minimized.
If you do it this way, you can eliminate time waste and be faster in delivering the task.
Involve Key People Early
There are many organizations that do not involve the right person at the first attempt to do the job. They want to get the job done by the least costly people. The result is that mistakes happen frequently and defective products are produced.
To avoid these unexpected events, organizations should involve the right person from the outset so that defect-free products can be produced the first time.
Quality-oriented Change and Organization Theory
In this section, the author will discuss the reasons for quality-oriented change, the sources of change, the nature of change, the difficulties of change, and how to manage change.
Reasons for Quality-oriented Change
The main reason behind TQ-oriented change is to improve quality for customer satisfaction. This is not the main focus of organization theory literature. Of course, many quality-oriented changes may improve productivity and job satisfaction, but that is not their main objective.
The Source of Change
Of course, TQ-oriented change will come from the top level of management. Without the full consent and proper support from top management, no radical change is possible within the organization.
Types of Change
Basically, within a TQ-oriented organization, the changes are cultural change that will induce the TQ, process change through which better quality products and services can be produced, and reengineering that induces the new technology within the workplace.
The Difficulties in Change
Mainly, the difficulties come from the existing employees of the organization in bringing any kind of change because of fear of the unknown. Sometimes, it also occurs because of the size of the plant. If the plant size is too large and the machinery is too heavy, change becomes difficult within the organization.
How to Manage Change
If resistance to change occurs, the top management will have to take the necessary steps to resolve it. They will have to remove the reasons for difficulty in changing.
If difficulty occurs for the employees, then management should arrange some training sessions through which the employees can learn about the new technology, and the fear of the unknown will go away.
If the difficulty is in the plant, they can install flexible machinery so that they can produce any new product or better product by replacing small parts of that machine.
Concurrent engineering is another way to solve this difficulty. Population ecology theorists generally argue that the difficulty of change may also be resolved by changing structures, authority, reward systems, and so forth.
Many of the principles for managing change derived from the organization theory literature apply directly to total quality change. Some of these principles are as follows:
- It is necessary to “unfreeze” people’s attitudes and behavior before they can be changed.
- Change can only succeed with effective leadership.
- Change agents must manage interdependence.
- Effective change must involve the people whose jobs are being changed.
- Refreezing is needed to make gains permanent.
