The business world is constantly evolving. Business strategies and technologies ebb and flow. What is here today is gone tomorrow. Such is the case with several workflow optimization methodologies that arose in the latter part of the 20th century: Six Sigma, Lean, and business process re-engineering. While many cast these workflow optimization strategies aside at the time, others, including Fortune 500 companies, openly embraced them.Yet their adoption was largely short-lived. The workflow optimization methodologies were both limited and rigid in their uses and were displaced by powerful technological solutions likebusiness process management software. In this article we will explore the rapid rise and demise of business process re-engineering, Lean, and Six Sigma.
The rise and fall of business process re-engineering
Business process re-engineering (BPR) came about in the mid-1980s following research by Michael Hammer and James Champy. Hammer and Champy argued that the movement to automate outdated business processes using computers would never remedy operational deficiencies. Rather, the authors proposed the concept of radical redesign and reorganization (termed “business process reengineering” in 1987) of an organization’s processes to reduce costs and improve quality.The economic recession in the early 1990s combined with the success that several large organizations like Ford and Hewlett-Packard had with their workflow redesigns led to a rise in the popularity of BPR. In 1993, Hammer and Champy published their bestselling book,Reengineering the Corporation: A Manifesto for Business Revolution. In their book, they encouraged businesses to discard existing processes and implement significant process improvements, as opposed to incremental improvements.Yet just a few years later many early proponents of BPR abandoned the practice. This was due to both several years of unimpressive results and the “wipe the slate clean” approach of BPR being too extreme for most organizations. For instance, the radical approach of BPR can take a negative toll on employee morale and destroy an organization’s culture.
