The integration
of benchmarking
and BPR
3
The integration of
benchmarking and BPR
A matter of choice or necessity?
Mohamed Zairi
University of Bradford Management Centre, Bradford, UK
The starting point
The change process is always associated with newness and innovation. Indeed,
throughout the various stages of civilization, people have always exploited
opportunities to improve the quality of working life, create more wealth and a
path for progress and advancement. Process redesign and re-engineering has
always been introduced as a force majeurto alleviate inherent complacency and
bring back discipline and better focus in steering organizations towards better
standards of competitiveness. What is currently being written on the subject of
business process re-engineering (BPR) is not necessarily new. The language is
perhaps current, but the message for industry is the same as those sent in
previous eras.
If one takes, for example, manufacturing industry and the period of
automation and computer-based technology which took place during the late
1970s and 1980s, similar concerns were raised about the levels of complacency
within industry and the high proportion of redundancy and obsolescence in
management concepts and technological innovations. In western Europe and
the USA for instance, the decline of manufacturing industry was attributed to
various factors, including, for example[1-11]:
●
limitations in the supply of labour available;
●
low share investment;
●
low rate of technological assimilation;
●
excessive spending in non-market, non-manufacturing areas; and
●
ill-advised changes in policy.
Industry’s poor record in introducing new technology is, however, found to be
one of the major reasons for steep decline. Some writers state the general
reluctance to innovate and management inflexibility[12] as chief factors. Others
refer to poor management for letting the manufacturing function become an
“out-of-date technician culture” as compared to other functions which are
“graduate-led professional cultures”[13-15]. It is the piecemeal approach
adopted by manufacturing companies to upgrade existing equipment in order
to achieve incremental competitive gains in increasingly complex markets
which is thought to have inhibited positive and effective competitiveness.
Small[16], for example, believes that manufacturing has always been the “poor
Business Process Re-engineering
& Management Journal,
Vol. 1 No. 3, 1995, pp. 3-9.
© MCB University Press, 1355-2503