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• Processes not organizations are the

subject of reengineering
• Sales or manufacturing departments
are not reengineered but the work the
people do in these departments
• Departments , Divisions & Groups are
familiar while processes are not.
• Organizational units have names but
processes do not have
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Cont.

• Every company has processes .

Processes are what companies do but
those are fragmented & obscured by
organizational structures
• Processes are invisible & unnamed
because people think about individual
departments & not processes in which
they are involved

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 Result

Processes tend to be unmanaged as

people are in charge of work units but
none given full responsibility for whole
job done

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 Solution

• One way to get better handle on

processes is to give them names
• Names should imply all work that gets
done between start & finish – state
change names e.g.
• Manufacturing – Procurement to
shipment
• Product Development – Concept to
prototype
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Cont.

• Sales – Prospect to order

• Order fulfillment – Order to payment

• Service – Enquiry to resolution

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 Process Maps

• Like organization charts , maps give

picture of how work flows

• They also provide vocabulary

• Let us look at Process map of

semiconductor division Texas
Instruments
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 Semi-Conductor division of Texas Instruments

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 Interesting Characteristics

• Simplicity : 6 processes for 4 billion $

business

• Hardly any company has more than 10

principal processes

• Each of these processes converts

inputs into outputs
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Cont.

Strategy development
Converts
Market Requirements
Into
Business Strategy
Identifying
Markets to be served
And
Products /Services to be offered

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Cont.

Product Development Process

Uses
This Output
As
Input
In Order To
Produce New Product Designs

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Cont.

Some General Product Designs

Need
Customization
Customer Design & Support Process
Creates
These Qualified Designs
Using
Standard Product Designs
And
Customer Requirements

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Cont.

Manufacturing Capability Development

Uses
Strategy
As
Input
And
Factory
As
Output
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Cont.

Customer Communication
Takes
Customer’ Questions / Enquiries
As
Input
And
Heightened Interest In TI Products
As
Output
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Cont.

Order Fulfillment
Converts
Order Request / Product Design / Factory
Into
Product
Delivered
To
Customer

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 Process Map Displays

• Clear & Comprehensive picture of the work at Texas

Instruments’ Semiconductor Division
• Something that never appears on an organization
chart. Customer is right in the centre
• Non customers in its view of processes. These
potential customers are included in Market label.
These non customers provide important input to
strategy development process
• Recognition that customers are companies with
processes too i.e. Concept Formulation ; Product
Development ; Manufacturing

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Cont.

• Manufacturing & Marketing do not

appear on this map because these are
not principal processes but sub
processes of Order Fulfillment . Sales
will also be sub process of Customer
communication & Product Development
• Map represents only high level
processes each of which can explode
into various sub processes
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 Selecting processes for reengineering

• All high-level processes can not be

reengineered simultaneously
• Three criteria used to identify
1. Dysfunction : one in the deepest trouble
– Broken process
2. Importance : one having greatest
impact on customers
3. Feasibility : susceptible to successful
design
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 Diagnostics

• Should look behind symptoms of process

distress to identify the disease
• Symptom: Extensive information
exchange ,data redundancy & keying
• What does this signify ?
• Disease : Arbitrary fragmentation of a natural
process
• Extensive communication is a way of coping
with unnatural boundaries

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Cont.

• The way to fix is to put pieces of that

activity together i.e. cross functional
integration
• This disease also involves frequent
phoning ,e-mailing , sending lots of
memos
• Providing additional /effective means of
communication amounts to treating
symptom
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Cont.

• To treat disease find out why should they call

so often may be we need a case worker
/case team
• Symptom : Inventory , buffers & other
assets
• Present trend is to move to JIT from current
reality JIC
• Real problem is uncertainty of demand &
hence they squirrel a little extra away

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Cont.

• Conventional reaction is to create

better inventory management tools
• Disease : System slack to cope with
uncertainty
• So removal of uncertainty by
structuring process requiring suppliers
& customers plan , schedule their
respective work together will treat
disease
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Cont.

• Symptom : High ratio of checking & control

to value adding work
• A lot of NVAs exist in organizations
• Does customer care for that activity or not is
the test to figure out if it is an NVA
• Some amount of checking / control is
unavoidable
• Question is whether it forms a significant
portion of all the work organization performs

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Cont.

• However checking & control is only a

symptom the real problem is
incompetence & mistrust
• Disease : Fragmentation

Objective of reengineering is not to

make checking & control more efficient
but to eliminate its root cause

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Cont.

• Symptom : Rework and iteration

• Both involve doing work again that has
been done once e.g. writing a
document several times over
• Problems are caught not when they
happen but only much later in the
process requiring more than one step
to be redone

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Cont.

• Disease : Inadequate feedback along

chains

Objective in RE is not to get rework get

done more efficiently but to eliminate it
by doing away with mistakes &
confusion that necessitate it

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Cont.

• Symptom : Complexity ,exceptions & special

cases
• In the beginning all processes are very
simple
• Every time some contingency arises process
gets modified by adding a special case or a
rule to deal with exception
• Soon simple process is buried under
exceptions & special cases
• Disease : Accretion onto a simple base
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Cont.

• In RE original clean process is uncovered &

other processes are created for other
situations
• Organizations have become accustomed to
standardizing which means trying to satisfy
every contingency with a single process.
In process design it is better to install a
decision point upfront that can send work
along one of several simple processes

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Cont.

• Symptoms do not always point

organizational physicians to correct
diagnosis
• Symptoms can be what is known in
medical science as referred pain
• Analyst has to locate the original source
of pain
• Hence RE is as much an art as science

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 Criteria for selection of Process

• Dysfunction : A process which is broken i.e.

has not produced results for a long time .
Not introduced new products for last 5 years
is a sign of Product Development Process
being dysfunctional
• Impact :Importance for the outside customer
. Company should decide as to which issues
their customers care about such as product
cost , on-time delivery , product features etc.

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Cont.

• Feasibility : Consider the factors which

will determine the likelihood of success
of a particular reengineering effort . For
a larger process scope is more but
probability of success will be low.
Similarly high cost reduces feasibility.
Strength of engineering team &
commitment of the process owner are
also factors to be considered .
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Cont.

• The method narrated in previous slides

is not a formal one . The criteria should
be used with wisdom to help make
choices . Additionally the following
questions can help in choosing the
process :
• Does process have significant effect on
strategic direction ?

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Cont.

• Is process performance far below best-

in- class standard ?
• Is it unable to gain more from this
process without RE ?
• Is the process antiquated ?
The more the yeses to questions such
as these the stronger the argument for
reengineering that process

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 Understanding Processes

• Before proceeding for redesign we need to

know about existing process what it does ,
how well it performs ,critical issues that
govern its performance
• As objective is not to improve existing
process ,it does not need to analyze &
document the process to expose all its details
• A high level view just enough to have the
intuition & insight necessary to create a
totally new & superior design
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Cont.

• The best place to understand a process is the

customer’s end
• What are the customer’s real requirements ?
• What do they say they want & what do they
really need ?
• What problems do they have ?
• What processes do they perform with the
output ?
Understanding customer needs does not mean asking customer
what those needs are..They will say what they think they want

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Cont.

• The goal is to understand what & why

& not how of the process
• Observing & performing the process is
the best way to develop insight into it
• Team must be vigilant about avoiding
temptation to over study
The goal must be to move quickly to
redesign

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