BPR Business Process Re-Engineering

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Question   Answer

So if BPR just means analysing how the company does stuff, or did stuff with some technology, why do they have the word "re-engineering" in the term? Because the word "Engineering" has a special meaning above and beyond simply looking at how to do things.

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Engineering

Engineering and technology are two terms often confused as meaning the same thing but they aren't. Engineering involves the application of "scientific, mathematical, economic, social, and practical knowledge, in order to design and build structures, machines, devices, systems, materials and processes" which allow humans to do something, something like lift a heavy stone a high height, or allow water to travel across an aqueduct for a city.  An example might be the following - technology is when you take a sharp edged stone to cut a piece of meat, engineering is when you use a sharp edged stone, under the weight of a heavy object (using the scientific principle of gravity) to then allow the edge to cut something very difficult that previously could not have been cut by the force of the human arm alone - which is an appreciation for the context that engineering is something you apply to "solve a problem".

In the context of explaining and describing the term "engineering" and "re-engineering", I (WTGR) borrowed heavily on the wisdom and experience of my father Prof. W. George Richardson, who taught Engineering History at Queen's for 35+ years. Image of W.G.R. and W.T.G.R. "shooting the cuffs" and the wedding of my son WGR also known as "Prof. Richardson Version 1.0 "

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Re-Engineering

Given the explanation of the term "engineering", "re-engineering" could then be expected to mean when you do some engineering again such that the result can be improved - this is partially correct. In business the term "re-engineering" has taken on a special definition of its own; a bit departed from the original engineering term.   Re-engineering refers to a circumstance of looking at all the different parts of an organization (usually a medium or large sized company with problems) and thinking about how you can get all the departments and units to work together more effectively - the idea being that sometimes the departments and divisions and subsidiaries of companies grow in a haphazard way and you need to set things back to achieve a structure that is more solid and based on fundamental business and marketing principles.

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Re-Engineering and IT

Another component of BPR is the application of contemporary IT Information Technology. It is considered that when medium and large sized companies were growing, they didn't have certain technological advances (web based services, smart phones etc.). Now that many new technologies make business processes easier it is considered strategic to go back and look at the way some departments and divisions of a company evolved, and see how applying the most contemporary technology can result in great cost saving and efficiencies. So a significant component of BPR is the selective application of IT to solve legacy problems.

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What are the things BPR deals with

A big part of BPR is looking at MIS - Management Information Systems (see UTSC course MGTC11). When consultants look at MIS to re-engineer the company, the specific things they investigate are ERP Enterprise Resource Planning Supply Chain Management - including J.I.T. and T.Q.M. Knowledge Management Systems and Databases Groupware and Collaborative Systems HR Human Resource Management Systems CRM Customer Relationship Management (ie. course BCS412) and the B2B and B2G relationships

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