Continuous Improvement in Business Process Re-Engineering & Six Sigma
In this paper the author predicts that the overwhelming majority of BPR initiatives now underway, or starting in the next year, will fail to achieve their intended result. With reference to his seven axioms of economic-quality he explains why and offers recommendations to guide better practice based on people practices; knowledge; systemic understanding and an appreciation of the importance of variation. The BPR method is defined by Hammer and Champy as “the fundamental reconsideration and radical redesign of organizational processes, in order to achieve drastic improvement of current performance in cost, service and speed”. At it’s turn, the Kaizen method is an management concept for incremental change. The key elements of Kaizen are quality, effort, involvement of all employees, willingness to change and communication. When BPR is compared with Kaizen method, the BPR is harder to implement, technology – oriented, enables radical change. On the other hand, Kaizen method is easier to implement, is more people – oriented and requires long term discipline.
