The Re-engineering RE-Revolution Will Deliver Process Value

I expect many people may recoil from, even dismiss my suggestion that we re-visit the Re-engineering Revolution.

That’s understandable.  In its most debased form the term Re-engineering was thoroughly corrupted, becoming a code word for indiscriminate downsizing

But I believe the concepts underpinning Re-engineering remain valid, even essential in today’s difficult business environment.

The recent (perhaps ongoing) Great Recession has taught us many things, especially the importance of delivering real value to customers while paring costs that don't contribute to value creation.

BPR may be corrupted but businesses today desperately need to become LEAN.

Lean is a philosophy and set of practices used to relentlessly improve Process Value while eliminating waste.  Lean approaches were honed by Toyota and have been refined and adopted for decades.  Both Lean and BPR seek the same goal—measurably improve process value. 

Meridian program for growing process value departs from traditional Lean/BPR approaches through our emphasis on implementation, and especially our commitment to making people a more effective part of your value improvement process.  Our approach has proven effective in manufacturing and service operations.

Mission

Meridian’s approach and traditional Lean approaches agree: Step one is to delineate how you will continually improve the value you deliver to customers.  Mission is a moving target, evolving over time in response to changing taste and competitive pressures, but should be specific and executable.  This is not an involved exercise—most organizations have some sense of Mission, though all find value in succinctly re-visiting their mandate before remaking their operations.

Work

It’s amazing how difficult it is to understand what people actually do day-to-day, hour-to-hour.  Sure there are job descriptions, but these artifacts rarely describe reality.

The key to changing work is to really understand what people do.  It’s not easy—even the simplest query “What are the five key things you do each day,” inevitably leads to a laundry list of actions and exceptions.

We’ve discovered the best route to productive discussions about work center on tangibles—on the inputs, work products, and deliverables people receive, process, and forward as part of their jobs.  In our experience people can pretty completely inventory the tangibles they routinely and exceptionally handle. 

The next level of analysis looks at the actions people take with each tangible—do they transform or improve the tangible, find and fix errors, or is the work purely administrative.  We’ve developed a set of definitions that facilitate effective characterization of all types of work.

Cataloging tangibles and evaluating the actions surrounding each tangible provide a compelling picture of work.  We use this snapshot to collectively evaluate the value of work while simultaneously looking for waste.  This vetting leads to ideas how work can be improved, automated, or eliminated; a roster of Quick Hit work improvements that can be implemented immediately; and a view as to what your Process Value might look like following work changes.

Commitment

This is the point where traditional Re-engineering programs fell apart.  Elite teams birthed brilliant designs that withered because there was no commitment to really changing work.

At this point in Meridian’s process we will have a roster of work changes and improvement opportunities.  We will also know what types and levels of investments will be required.

But to succeed we need to build a broad commitment to implement.

The first task is to build support amongst Directors and Managers—the people with immediate responsibility for managing your production and service personnel.  Directors and Managers really shape how work is accomplished.  Change is not achieved without their support.

We believe the best way to gain support is to ask your Managers or Directors to establish implementation priorities.  Allow them to build their Re-engineering agenda.  Ask them to sell their agenda up and down the hierarchy, engaging both the people who work for them and the people for whom they work.  There is no better way to put your Process Value initiative on a solid footing.

The second task is to translate work improvements into concrete steps.  Many Re-engineering teams lacked what we call “first step vision”—they can see the grand design, and can forecast multiple methods for improving value, but they are hard pressed to describe the simple first steps implementers need to take.

To avoid this common malady we devised “Stop-Start-Change” forms. 

A Stop-Start-Change (SSC) form makes explicit how work needs to change for every role touched by your value improvement program.  It delineates which existing tasks should be stopped, which new tasks should be started, and when today’s approaches to work should be changed.

SSC forms accelerate the rate at which new work procedures are adopted, hastening your program’s return on investment.

Implementation

It’s important to attach measurable impacts to work changes—especially reductions in waste.  In the Lean world waste is anything that does not add value to customers.  The accepted definitions of manufacturing waste, and Meridian’s definitions of services waste, are shown in the following table.  These categories provide the basis for charting results from your Process Value initiative.

In Closing

I admit this post went far longer than originally planned.  Allow me to end with two overarching thoughts.

Whether you use Meridian’s approach or more traditional Lean/BPR approaches,

Continuous Improvement is today’s unavoidable imperative.    

If not underway please consider taking your first steps toward a higher value, lower waste future today.

A Re-engineering "RE-Revolution"

I have a commitment I want to share.

As you may know Meridian has extensive experience helping clients improve business operations.  Most recently operational improvements have been tied to ERP implementations.

But process work substantially pre-dates our ERP involvement.  And my personal experience with process improvement dates to the days of Michael Hammer and the vaunted “re-engineering revolution.”

Whatever happened to the expected “re-engineering revolution?”  Sure Michael Hammer put processes on our brains, but what happened to the “process re-engineering” movement—you know, the widely accepted belief that process re-design was the answer to many corporate ills and inefficiencies.

Wikipedia tells the tale, correctly crediting the 1990 Hammer/Champy HBR article, “Re-engineering Work: Don’t Automate, Obliterate” as the Business Process Re-engineering (BPR) movement’s kick-off.

But the party barely got started.

“The most frequent and harsh critique against BPR concerns the strict focus on efficiency and technology and the disregard for the people in the organizations who were subjected to re-engineering initiatives."

“Very often, the label BPR was used for major workforce reductions.”

I couldn’t agree more.

I don’t doubt that Michael Hammer and a cadre of BPR practitioners fundamentally changed the way we think about and talk about business.  But the actual practice of BPR had too much collateral damage—efficiencies gained at the expense of jobs, morale, and commitment.  Even Hammer himself agreed, later stating, "I wasn't smart enough about that (the people impacts of BPR).  I was reflecting my engineering background and was insufficiently appreciative of the human dimension.”

Lost in the mists is the fact that the rationale for BPR remains valid—managers should obliterate work that does not add value to customers, not automate it.

For the past decade Meridian has worked to make people a better, more effective part of ERP implementations and use.

Our next big commitment is to cure the ills plaguing the solid concepts underpinning Business Process Re-engineering—to make people a better, more effective part of the BPR process.

More about how in my next posts.