ORGANIZATIONAL REENGINEERING: PROCESS AND EXAMPLES - DUDAS - 2025

The organizational reengineering is a technique used to redesign business processes. This is done in order to leverage the strengths of the organization, called core competencies.

It is the process of reviewing all the different levels of an organization's way of doing business and considering how to improve things. Using this technique, a company can align itself for the future, increasing its profitability and market share.

Source: Marmelad, via Wikimedia Commons

Methods that streamline workflow involve shortening the physical distance between the plant and suppliers, decentralization, employing technology and management techniques, controlling costs such as cost of sales, and delivery time.

By identifying strengths and weaknesses, an organization can take steps to reengineer its operational processes, improving productivity.

In addition to focusing on existing processes, organizational reengineering transforms processes and helps the organization maximize its core competencies to be more efficient.

Strategic and operational planning, which involves representatives from all functional areas, helps management lead organizational reengineering efforts.

Process

Organizational reengineering is the practice of rethinking and redesigning the way work is done to better support an organization's mission and reduce costs.

Organizations redesign two key areas of their businesses. First, they use modern technologies to improve data dissemination and decision-making processes.

Then begins a high-level assessment of the organization's mission, its strategic goals, and customer needs.

Basic questions are asked, such as: Is it necessary to redefine the mission? Are the strategic objectives aligned with the mission? Who are the clients?

An organization may find that it is operating under questionable assumptions, particularly in terms of the wants and needs of customers. Only after the organization reconsiders what it should do, does it decide the best way to do it.

Within the framework of this basic mission and objectives assessment, reengineering focuses on the organization's business processes and also on the procedures that govern how resources are used to create products and services that meet the needs of customers. customers.

Process redesign

A business process can be broken down into specific activities, as well as measured and improved.

It can also be redesigned or removed. Reengineering identifies, analyzes, and redesigns the main business processes of an organization in order to achieve great improvements in performance indicators, such as cost, quality, service, and speed.

Reengineering recognizes that the processes of an organization are generally divided into sub-processes and tasks, which are carried out in several specialized functional areas within the company.

Often, no one is responsible for the overall performance of the entire process. Reengineering indicates that optimizing thread performance can yield some benefits. However, you cannot produce drastic improvements if the process itself is inefficient and out of date.

For that reason, reengineering focuses on redesigning the process as a whole. This way you can achieve the greatest possible benefits for your organization and your customers.

This drive to make big improvements, by rethinking how the work of the organization should be done, is what distinguishes reengineering from sub-process improvement efforts, which are focused on functional or incremental improvement.

Organizational reengineering changes

The idea behind organizational reengineering is to make the company more flexible, responsive, and efficient for all stakeholders: customers, employees, and owners. The company must be willing to make the following changes:

- Change from being focused on management to focusing on the client: the boss is not the boss, the client is the boss.

- Train the workers involved in each process to make decisions and own the processes.

- Shift the emphasis from managing activities to focus on results.

- Focus on leading and teaching employees so they can measure their own results.

- Change the orientation of the company from functional to multifunctional. This allows increasing organizational knowledge among members and a greater degree of flexibility in the fulfillment of tasks.

- Move serial operations to concurrent operations. In other words, multitasking instead of just doing one thing at a time.

- Get rid of excessively complex and complicated processes in favor of simple and streamlined processes.

characteristics

The characteristics of organizational reengineering include several important elements. On the one hand, reengineering cannot continue without the full support of a company's top management.

With management approval, those responsible for reengineering should develop a clear review plan and also a vision of what will be achieved with the results.

Reengineering is also known for the use of information technology to meet the objectives of a business, creating the necessary databases and networks that can be used to create a seamless business process.

Examples

Organizational reengineering has produced verifiable results in several large companies.

Since the 1990s the computer company Dell has used various elements of reengineering. He has attributed much of his long-term success to recognizing the need for continuous reengineering.

Additionally, American Airlines and Procter & Gamble have reengineered after periods of severe financial distress, seeing improvements in their fight against debt and in recovering profits.

Fast food

An example of organizational reengineering is that of a fast food company. Complete redesign of product delivery can lead to unexpected results.

In this type of restaurant, the process is the same as in all the others. There are customer orders, the order goes to the kitchen, the kitchen prepares the food and then delivers it to the consumer.

Business process analysts realized it would be more advantageous if food portions were pre-prepared in a separate facility and shipped daily to restaurants. So when the customer orders, the staff puts everything together and delivers it.

This is a complete change in the process. This results in greater control, fewer accidents, greater employee satisfaction and a greater ability to focus on customer needs, all without losing quality.

References

1. Jeffrey Lowenthal (1994). Core Competencies & Organizational Reengineering: Aligning the Organization for the Future. ASQ. Taken from: asq.org.
2. Kristie Lorette (2018). What Does Reengineering an Organization Mean? Small Business - Chron.com. Taken from: smallbusiness.chron.com.
3. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (2018). Business process reengineering. Taken from: en.wikipedia.org.
4. Study (2018). What Is Reengineering in Business? - Definition, Examples & Methodology. Taken from: study.com.
5. Heflo (2018). Business Process Reengineering Examples - Understand and Learn from them. Taken from: heflo.com.