Eliminating waste.Business process improvement

BPR is an acronym for business process reengineering. BPR efforts call for radical restructuring of processes to eliminate waste and improve quality. Some commentators have declared the death of BPR. Eor many, it is associated with downsizing and layoffs. However, the intent of BPR, if not the label, will always be with us. BPR-type efforts take many forms. For example, new computer systems and reengineering are closely linked in many minds. Six Sigma is a quality initiative that is also a close cousin of BPR. Lean is another label for efforts to reduce waste in processes. 

Improvement in business performance is essential for growth and profit, but the ISO/TS 16949 requirements are not concerned with your growth and profits they are concerned with product quality, and one definition of product quality that signals improvement potential is freedom from defects . Achieving quality become a quest to eliminate defects and in so doing reduces variation in the operational processes, but even when there are no defectives, there will still be variation. One might well question the need to reduce variation when there are no defectives but by reducing variation you will have fewer breakdowns, fewer errors, less space allocated to inventory, less waste, etc. in fact fewer problems and increased profit as a result. 

In some cases the amount of waste may be considered too small to justify the research needed to find a use for it or to improve the process to eliminate it. The staff may also be so busy with potentially profitable new ventures that it hesitates to take time to devise a new process for a mature product made in an established plant. This may be particularly true in the current period of downsizing and restructuring. 

The task is to shape inter-company supply chains and to constantly improve them in such a way as if all performance were to be rendered by a single responsible institution. After all your customers are only interested in the legal boundaries of the partner enterprises that take part in the performance processes to the extent that they have advantages in terms of time and price through the professional accomplishment of the tasks at hand. Consequently, a supply chain should only include those processes which must actually be performed for the customer. The supply chain concept at the very least encourages us to eliminate the time and resource waste between enterprises and to plan and control the network of businesses as enterprise. 

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