What are the origins of reengineering?
The origins of reengineering can be traced back several decades, but it wasn't until the late 1980s that it popularized as a management strategy. The term reengineering was coined by Michael Hammer and James Champy in their 1993 book "Reengineering the Corporation: A Manifesto for Business Revolution".
The core idea behind reengineering is to radically redesign an organization's processes to achieve significant improvements in performance measures such as cost, quality, service, and speed. Here's a closer look at the origins and key influences that contributed to the development of reengineering:
1. Taylorism and Scientific Management: Reengineering shares some principles with Taylorism, which emphasizes efficiency and standardization of work processes. Taylor's focus on breaking down tasks into smaller, repeatable steps influenced reengineering's process optimization approach.
2. Business Process Management: The concept of business process management (BPM) played a role in shaping reengineering. BPM focuses on analyzing, improving, and managing the flow of activities and information across an organization's processes.
3. Total Quality Management (TQM): TQM emphasizes continuous improvement and customer satisfaction, which aligns with reengineering's focus on enhancing quality and meeting customer needs.
4. Just-in-Time (JIT) Production Systems: JIT is a manufacturing philosophy that aims to reduce waste and improve efficiency. The concept of eliminating non-value-added activities in JIT influenced the focus on streamlining and simplification in reengineering.
5. Information Technology: Advances in information technology during the late 1980s and early 1990s provided the necessary tools to facilitate process automation, data management, and the integration of different systems, enabling the comprehensive redesign and optimization of processes.
6. Global Competition: The increasing globalization of business during the 1980s and 1990s intensified competitive pressure, pushing organizations to seek innovative ways to gain a competitive advantage, including through reengineering.
7. Customer-Centric Approach: The increasing focus on customer satisfaction and value creation in business strategies influenced reengineering's emphasis on aligning processes with customer needs and expectations.
These factors collectively paved the way for reengineering to emerge as a disruptive and transformative approach to business process improvement. While its popularity has fluctuated over the years, the principles and concepts of reengineering continue to influence modern business process management and organizational transformation efforts.