5. Write brief note on Business Process Re-engineering.

Business Process Reengineering

Techniques such as Business Process Reengineering (BPR) and balanced scorecard emerged in the 1990s. These techniques influenced the development of various excellence models. The scorecard being the greater BPR brought in an approach called Green Field to redesign the major business processes by challenging basic assumptions and accepting change. The BPR aims at bringing about a change in performance, cost, quality, and customer satisfaction. The balanced scorecard is a measurement system that enables the conversion of strategy into action by identifying the cause and effect relationships that deliver the desired strategic results.

The BPR attempts to link the people dimensions of learning and growth to the process issues of quality and time, then to the customer dimensions of delivery and loyalty and finally to financial outcomes such as return on capital employed (ROCE). Every excellence framework includes this basic conceptual thinking.

With the decline of TQM programmes in some countries, a subsequent quality concept called Six-Sigma saw a drastic increase in application. The concept of Six-Sigma is not new. It can be traced back to Motorola in the early 1980s.

Six-Sigma is a methodology to improve the processes of an organisation based on accurately gathered data and analysis performed. This approach mainly focuses on helping the organisations to produce better, faster and cheaper products and services by improving the capability of processes to meet the customer needs. It also identifies and removes costs that do not add any value to the customers. Six-Sigma cuts down the cost but retains or improves the value to customers.