Reengineering and continuous improvement

Abstract

The relationship between continuous process improvement and business process reengineering has been a heavily debated topic for some time. However, these two approaches are very similar because each aims for process improvement. They only differ in focus. Processes and systems have parts that perform the work of the system, and relations among the parts that define how the work should be performed. For example, a business process has employees as its parts, and procedures and directives as its relations. Both parts and relations must be effective for the system to succeed in meeting its objectives. Based on systems theory, changes in a system's relations often represent the largest potential for improvement because the relations provide the structure in which the system functions. Reengineering is the "fundamental rethinking and radical redesign of business processes to achieve dramatic improvements in critical, contemporary measure of performance, such as cost, quality, service and speed," according to Hammer and Champy in Reengineering the Corporation. To achieve such drastic improvements, a focus on relations is necessary because, according to systems theory, relations primarily determine system performance. Thus, business process reengineering focuses on system relations. On the other hand, continuous process improvement seeks incremental improvements that are not drastic, according to Masaaki Imai in Kaizen: The Key to Japan's Competitive Success. These incremental improvements usually focus on the individual parts of a process or system. Based on the premise that continuous process improvement and business process reengineering are both forms of process improvement that differ only in their focus, there are models and prescriptions for improvement initiatives at the end of this article