The relationship between continuous process improvement and business process reengineering has been a heavily debated topic for some time. However, these two approaches are very similar because each aims for process improvement. They only differ in focus. Processes and systems have parts that perform the work of the system, and relations among the parts that define how the work should be performed. For example, a business process has employees as its parts, and procedures and directives as its relations. Both parts and relations must be effective for the system to succeed in meeting its objectives. Based on systems theory, changes in a system's relations often represent the largest potential for improvement because the relations provide the structure in which the system functions.

1. 1
Reengineering and Continuous Improvement
By Dr.Mahboob Khan Phd
In a complex system, relations dominate and primarily determine the success of the
system.
The relationship between continuous process improvement and business process
reengineering has been a heavily debated topic for some time. However, these two
approaches are very similar because each aims for process improvement. They
only differ in focus.
Processes and systems have parts that perform the work of the system, and
relations among the parts that define how the work should be performed. For
example, a business process has employees as its parts, and procedures and
directives as its relations. Both parts and relations must be effective for the system
to succeed in meeting its objectives. Based on systems theory, changes in a
system's relations often represent the largest potential for improvement because the
relations provide the structure in which the system functions.
Reengineering is the "fundamental rethinking and radical redesign of business
processes to achieve dramatic improvements in critical, contemporary measure of
performance, such as cost, quality, service and speed," according to Hammer and
Champy in Reengineering the Corporation. To achieve such drastic improvements,
a focus on relations is necessary because, according to systems theory, relations
primarily determine system performance. Thus, business process reengineering
focuses on system relations. On the other hand, continuous process improvement
seeks incremental improvements that are not drastic, according to Masaaki Imai in
Kaizen: The Key to Japan's Competitive Success. These incremental improvements
usually focus on the individual parts of a process or system.
Based on the premise that continuous process improvement and business process
reengineering are both forms of process improvement that differ only in their
focus, there are models and prescriptions for improvement initiatives at the end of
this article.
Systems and processes: Parts and relations
There are several definitions for a system, but the most generic and practical is that
a system is a group of parts or components that work together to achieve a
common goal. For example, every person has many body parts that combine to
form the human body and its systems, which has goals such as growth and
survival. In a business organization, employees and groups work together to
achieve the organization's goals, such as higher market share and technological
leadership.

2. 2
We can define a system's main elements as the "parts" that perform the work and the
"relations" that define how the work will be accomplished. Obviously, both parts and
relations are important for a system to perform adequately. For instance, imagine a
basketball team as a system. The system parts are the players, and the relations are the
way the players work together (i.e., their "teamwork"). Both the players and teamwork
are important to the team's success. If each of the players does not understand the
fundamentals of the game, such as how to dribble the ball or shoot at the basket, the
team won't do well, regardless of how well the players work together. On the other
hand, the team will still be unsuccessful if all players have excellent individual skills
yet refuse to pass the ball or involve other players.
The same example can be applied to business systems in organizations. A business
system, or process, must have skilled employees working together in an effective
manner. The employees or small work groups represent the parts of the business
system, and the procedures, coordination and communication among them represent
the relations. When a process is not achieving the desired results, the traditional
response is to encourage employees to work harder and better. This represents a focus
on the system's parts.
Slogans and posters such as "Do your best!" and "We're counting on you to make a
difference!" point to the individual employees as the reason why the process is
yielding poor results. Many people can testify, this is a very frustrating situation to be
caught in. Usually, the process is broken because of the ineffective manner in which
the employees are forced to coordinate. Most employees are very limited in their
power to make changes to a process or organization.
A better and more effective response to inefficient processes is to focus on the
system's relations. Alter the work flow, eliminate activities, collocate personnel or
make similar changes. The recent field of systems thinking emphasizes this point
strongly. One of the first systems thinkers, Jay Forrester, states in his groundbreaking
1961 book, Industrial Dynamics, "We can expect that the interconnections and
interactions between the components of the system will often be more important than
the separate components themselves." In The Fifth Discipline, author Peter Senge
builds upon this idea by stating that the leverage for change or improvement of a
system is found in the structure, or relations, of the system. In systems thinking,
relations themselves tend to take on their own identity.

3. 3
The change continuum
Two common phrases that are often interpreted as separate approaches, business
process reengineering and continuous process improvement, are actually similar in
nature. Both involve change and improvement. However, the focus of each is
different. Continuous process improvement primarily focuses on the parts of a system
or process, while business process reengineering primarily focuses on the relations.
For instance, if a company only retrained its employees (a focus on parts), it would
most likely not be called business process reengineering. Conversely, if a company
rearranged a process so that activities occurred differently and eliminated 50 percent
of the labor (a focus on relations), it would most likely not be called continuous
process improvement.
Figure 1 shows a spectrum for rates of
change. At one end is status quo, which
involves no change, and at the other end
is reengineering, which involves drastic
change. In the middle is continuous
improvement, which represents minor
change. Based on the systems theory that
the leverage for major change is in a
system's relations, drastic changes using
reengineering involve changing system
relations.
Models for focusing improvement efforts
At a fundamental level, if we define system complexity as a measurement of the
amount of relations present in a system, we can establish a model for focusing efforts
to improve a system. For instance, using the basketball team example from earlier, the
team can be considered a complex system because of the many relations that exist
among players. Although a basketball team's score is just the addition of all the
players' scores, players influence and affect each other such that each player's score is
partially a function of the system's relations. In other words, one player's score
depends on the relations with other players. In a complex system, relations dominate
and have a substantial affect on the system's success.
At the opposite extreme, a golf team represents a simple system because no relations
exist among players. The golf team's score consists of all the players' scores, but in
golf, each player does not normally influence or affect the other players. Each player's
score is independent. In a simple system, the system's individual parts dominate and
primarily determine the system's success.

4. 4
To improve a basketball team or any other type of complex system in which the
relations dominate, the focus must be primarily on the relations. Conversely, to
improve a golf team or any type of simple system in which the individual parts
dominate, the focus must be primarily on the individual parts. Figure 2 illustrates this
model. The X in the figure represents ineffective efforts.
For complex systems, we
can extend this model to
incorporate business
process reengineering and
continuous process
improvement. Figure 3
serves as a guide for
improvement initiatives of
complex systems in which
the system is influenced
by both parts and
relations. Again, the X in the figure represents ineffective efforts.
For instance, consider the traditional engineering company that is organized by
functions. Generally, work flows from design to planning to manufacturing. An
individual within each functional area does his or her portion of the work and throws
the work "over the wall" to the next step in the process. This is a complex system.
Now, suppose that this process is producing unsatisfactory results. If the company
were simply to improve each functional area separately, this improvement effort
would be focused on the system's parts. The positive results would be minimal.
In fact, in this example, the results are often worse. As each functional area attempts
to optimize its portion of the process, the total process becomes suboptimized and
more confusing to those participating. However, if the company improved the process
by collocating personnel from each of the separate functional areas and changing the
reward program, this improvement effort would focus on the system's relations and
would produce better results. Enhanced communication and team appraisals would
represent new relationships among team members.
In this example, as in many process improvements, the major problems are not with
the employees. The employees are simply acting in accordance with the system that
they are in. They do not communicate often because they are isolated and working
with different standards. In addition, the reward program may encourage individual
effort as opposed to team success. The real problem lies in the system structure of
separating employees who need to share critical and timely information. Change this
structure, and the process will generate new results.

5. 5
The models shown in figures 2 and 3 are summarized in the following bulleted lists,
which also include simple prescriptions to facilitate improvement initiatives.
Focus on individual parts (i.e., employees and small work groups) of a system or
process when:
Minimal improvements are desired.
Relations cannot be changed.
The system is simple and does not have many relations.
How to focus on parts:
Educate employees about the process of which they are a part.
Train the employees in the necessary skills for their activities.
Show employees their spans of control.
Ensure that all employees are receiving necessary resources.
Focus on the relations (i.e., procedures, coordination and communication) of a system
or process when:
Major improvements are desired.
Improvement of individual parts has yielded minimal results.
The system is complex and dominated by relations.
How to focus on relations:
Re-evaluate process objectives.
Eliminate as much handling of the product as possible.
Eliminate buffer inventories between activities.
Establish teams that include all necessary disciplines and cross-train members.
Flowchart the process with participation from all team members.
Model the process on a computer using simulation software.

6. 6
Know where to focus
Any process or system is composed of individual parts that perform the work of the
system, and relations that describe how the work should be accomplished. In complex
systems that contain many parts and relations, the relations typically determine the
system's performance. Therefore, improvement efforts that seek drastic improvements
should focus on the relations. This is typically called business process reengineering.
If small improvements are desired in a complex system, then the efforts should focus
on improving the system's individual parts. This is typically called continuous process
improvement. If the system is simple, the only way to achieve improvement is to
focus primarily on the individual parts because very few relations exist.
Public hospitals in india are faced with many challenges. Amongst them are long
queues and long waiting time at the outpatients clinics. Long queues and waiting
time are a result of uncoordinated internal processes. In order to address the long
queues and patient waiting time, the management of one hospital introduced
Business Process Reengineering (BPR). The implementation of BPR resulted in
improvement as service level was at about ~87%. The change in top level of the
management at the hospital led to regression of some of the gains that the hospital
had experienced. The key factors which drive BPR success are top management
and coherent understanding of the urgency of the situation. The purpose of this
paper is to identify the causes of BPR failure and proposals of new interventions to
address the problems. Failure factors which have been identified include
organizational resistance, lack of organizational readiness to change, lack of
training and education, problems related to commitment support and leadership,
problems related to championship, problems related to integration mechanism,
jobs’ definition and responsibilities allocation, problems related to BPR resources,
and ineffective use of consultants. . In conclusion it has been observed that the
institution prematurely declared the success of BPR even before change became
part of the institution’s culture. This is reflected by the action taken by the current
top management as it does not seem to personify the change effort. It is
recommended that the top management get the employee buy-in and ownership;
appoint and empower a champion; engage supervisors in the re-engineered
departments to work with the champion; appoint a BPR team, train them and then
make the team to benchmark with other public sector organizations; secure
resources for BPR.