What Is Reengineering

3 Pages 638 Words

What is true reengineering? True engineering is the radical redesign of business processes to achieve major gains in cost, service, or time (Hunger, 2003, p.207). To answer this more completely, take a look at what reengineering is not:

- reengineering is not downsizing
- reengineering eliminates work, not jobs
- reengineering is not “restructuring”
- reengineering is not automation (Business, n.d., p.8)
Reengineering means starting fresh by abandoning the policies and procedures that were born decades ago and inventing new ways of accomplishing work with the intent to dramatically improve performance(Dynamic, 2004, para.4-6). In today’s business world, to remain competitive, organizations are focusing on innovation, speed, adaptability, quality, service, and costs (Dynamic, 2004, para.2). In order to keep up, organizations must reorganize and reengineer how they do things. Specifically, reengineering is an examination and change of strategy, processes, technology, organization, and culture (Business, 2004, para.1).

Reengineering should be a tool used by companies who have fallen too far down and by companies who aren’t in trouble yet but foresee it coming. Another time reengineering can be used is by companies who are in top form and but wish to increase the competitive margin. I think of it as a kind of metamorphosis a company undergoes to take it to the next level.

One example of successful reengineering was implemented by Hallmark. Previously, the time from creation to development of a card was 3 years. As Hallmark developed more of a market, executives determined the development process needed to change and set a goal of getting new products to market within one year. Through the reengineering process, Hallmark discovered the greatest consumption of time was spent developing and designing the card, not in the production time printing the card. The concept spent 90% of the ti...