Whether Total Quality Management and Continuous Improvement render Business Process Reengineering unnecessary

¶ … Total Quality Management Continuous Improvement, properly applied, render BPR (Business Process Reengineering) unnecessary.' Discuss.

Total Quality Management and Continuous Improvement, when properly applied, render Business Process Reengineering unnecessary

The internationalized economic crisis constituted the number one challenge for economic agents across the world, who suddenly found themselves faced with resource constraints, decreasing purchasing power of customers as well as other somber predicaments. While the topic of the crisis is extremely complex and has yet to be exhaustivated, at this level, only one specific feature of the crisis would be addressed -- the fact that it reminded economic agents of the need to remain alert, flexible and to continually develop and improve in order to increase their organizational capabilities.

The specialized literature and the business community have for years communicated the importance of continuous development for business success. Some reasons as to the importance of this lesson include the employees who have metamorphosed from the force operating the machines into the most valuable organizational asset, the incremental demands of the customers, but also the incremental demands of the overall stakeholder categories, the increasing national and international competition, the advent of technology and so on.

Most economic agents have learnt the lesson due to the escalating competition and encountered the need for change as a means of remaining competitive, but their efforts were often incomplete. As for the financial crisis, it presented several economic agents with the possibility to reorganize and improve their internal climates. In other words, in a slow economic environment in which demand is restricted and investment opportunities are dangerous, economic entities have focused on techniques of internal improvements.

Three notable techniques used in the direction of organizational improvement are represented by Total Quality Management (TQM), Continuous Improvement and Business Process Reengineering (BPR). A belief is however issued according to which the techniques are self excluding in the meaning that when Total Quality Management and Continuous Improvement are adequately developed and implemented, Business Process Reengineering is rendered unnecessary.

It is the scope of the current project to discuss this statement, but before launching such a discussion, it is first necessary to ensure a full and adequate comprehension of each of the three concepts. After the three techniques of organizational improvement are detailed and discussed in relationship to each other in order to respond to the above statement, the project concludes by restating the most important findings of the research as well as those of the discussion.

2. Total Quality Management

The specialized literature offers an impressive array of definitions for the concept of Total Quality Management. The lines below reveal some of the most notable of these definitions:

(a) TQM is "a management approach of an organization, centered on quality, based on the participation of all its members and aiming at long-term success through customer satisfaction and benefits to the members of the organization and to the society" (the ISO 9000 definition, quoted by Subburaj, 2005).

(b) Marshall Sashkin and Kenneth J. Kiser (1993) explain that a company operating on TQM implies that the "organization's culture is defined by and supports the constant attainment of customer satisfaction through an integrated system of tools, techniques and training. This involved the continuous improvement of organizational processes, resulting in high quality products and services."

(c) Finally, a third definition is retrieved from Investopedia (2010), a website specialized in financial terms and functioning under the patronage of the Forbes corporation, According to the editors at Investopedia, Total Quality Management represents the "continuous process of reducing or eliminating errors in manufacturing, streamlining supply chain management, improving the customer experience and ensuring that employees are up-to-speed with their training. Total quality management aims to hold all parties involved in the production process as accountable for the overall quality of the final product or service."

All in all, Total Quality Management is a complex system of techniques and procedures aimed at ensuring a higher quality of the organizational processes, with the stated impact of increasing the value created for the various stakeholder categories -- such as employees, customers, business partners, the general public and so on -- and eventually registering increased financial gains.

4. Business Process Reengineering

Following the trend established throughout the previous two sections, the scope at this stage is that of creating a full comprehension of the process of business reengineering. Radhakrishnan commences at the premises that BPR integrates change, and not just sporadic, isolated and slow change, but a dramatic change. And this dramatic change refers to overhauls in organizational structures, performance measurements, managerial systems, the development of skills, the creation and implementation of incentive systems or the use of information technology.

As changes at these organizational levels are incurred, the impacts can materialize in significant cost reductions, improvements in productivity levels, increases in customer satisfaction as well as other parameters of organizational performance (Radhakrishnan). At a more specific level, Business Process Reengineering can be defined as follows:

"Reengineering is the fundamental rethinking and radical redesign of business processes to achieve dramatic improvements in critical, contemporary measures of performance, such as cost, quality, service, and speed" (Hammer and Champy, 1993, quoted by Radhakrishnan).

"Business process reengineering (often referred to by the acronym BPR) is the main way in which organizations become more efficient and modernize. Business process reengineering transforms an organization in ways that directly affect performance" (Carter).

5. Futility of BPR in the proper application of TQM and Continuous Improvement

At a basic level, it can be observed that the three concepts previously defined are highly similar. In this order of ideas, TQM is a complex set of processes aimed at increasing customer satisfaction. Continuous Improvement is also a set of activities aimed at increasing organizational performances through gradual processes of change. Finally, Business Process Reengineering represents the development and implementation of dramatic changes within the organization with the scope of enhancing the company's performances.

The starting statement is that the combination of TQM and Continuous Improvement renders BPR unnecessary and the conclusion is that this statement is in fact true. In this order of ideas, all three techniques are centered on the same scope of improved organizational performances. This virtually means that when TQM and Continuous Improvement are adequately combined and implemented, the introduction of BPR would be redundant.

In other words, when adequately implemented, Total Quality Management and Continuous Improvement lead to the successful completion of the organizational purposes. Specifically, TQM and Continuous Improvement can enhance organizational performances at a wide array of levels, including customer satisfaction, technological innovation, return on shareholders' equity, productivity levels, efficiency levels and so on. The fact that these performance objectives are met through TQM and Continuous Improvement means that the company can check them off the list. Since the goals are completed, the implementation of Business Process Reengineering would be futile.

Another element which indicates the unnecessary feature of BPR in the context of well implemented Total Quality Management and Continuous Improvement is revealed by the fact that BPR constitutes a dramatic change in organizational operations. The adequate usage of TQM and Continuous Improvement renders unnecessary the very dramatic change.

In this order of ideas, with the aid of well designed programs of TQM and Continuous Improvement, the managerial team within economic agents can easily identify the need for change. For instance, TQM and Continuous Improvement allow the managers to thoroughly research the market and the industry and identify needs such as those of better training the staff members, increasing the quality of the products, becoming more competitive, generating higher levels of customer satisfaction and so on.

Furthermore, the proper combination of TQM and Continuous Improvement allows the managers to develop and implement the most successful strategies required to responding to the needs for change as these had been initially identified. For instance, if the analysis has identified the need for better skilled staff members, TQM and Continuous Improvement can support the implementation of training programs which create better skilled staff members. Also, if the analysis identified the need for more competitive strategies, TQM and Continuous Improvement can support the leading groups in developing and implementing those strategies. In this context then, the usage of Business Process Reengineering becomes unnecessary.

And not only that BPD is rendered unnecessary by the proper combination between Time Quality Management and Continuous Improvement, but it is also perceived as less desirable than TQM and Continuous Improvement. This conclusion was reached based on the times of action of the two methods. In this order of ideas, TQM and Continuous Improvement are implemented in a gradual manner, throughout increased time frames and they attain long-term visible results. BPR on the other hand is implemented in a highly dynamic manner, in which change is executed quickly and at the end of which results are quickly visible. This situation generates doubts about the long-term stability of BPR.

Specifically, it can be believed that Business Process Reengineering is considered desirable in situations in which a process of organizational change has to be implemented in pressuring conditions, such as limited time span or an increased aggressiveness of the change process. Under such circumstances, a dynamic change as promoted through the practices of BPR would be superior to the practices of TQM and Continuous Improvement. In other words, Business Process Reengineering is better functional in crisis situations, but as for ongoing business models, it is rendered unnecessary by the proper combination between Time Quality Management and Continuous Improvement.

6. Conclusions

The internationalized financial crisis of the modern day society has reminded economic agents of the necessity to quickly and efficiently respond to the emergent requirements of the market and the industry. In fact, some of them have used the slower economic season to improve their internal skills.

Three popular techniques to improving the organizational performances are represented by Total Quality Management, Continuous Improvement and Business Process Reengineering. At the specific level of these three concepts, a question is being posed relative to their complementarity within the business climate. The analysis so far conducted has commenced with the definition and explanation of the three techniques and has concluded that TQM and Continuous Improvement do render Business Process Reengineering unnecessary. In other words, it was identified that TQM and Continuous Improvement are complementary processes which -- when adequately combined and balanced -- can successfully support the organization in reaching its performance objectives. In a context in which the company's goals are reached through TQM and Continuous Improvement, BPR becomes redundant and inefficient.

Additionally, based on the duration and the time features of the processes, it was concluded that TQM and Continuous Improvement are gradually implemented, to generate long-term sustainable results. BPR is however implemented more dynamically and the stability of its outcomes can be questionable. Overall then, Business Process Reengineering is, under normal circumstances, less efficient and unnecessary when TQM and Continuous Improvement are properly combined and executed.

References:

Carter, P., Business Process Reengineering -- an introductory guide, Team Technology, http://www.teamtechnology.co.uk/business-process-reengineering.html last accessed on January 28, 2011

Radhakrishnan, Business Process Reengineering: text and cases, PHI Learning Pvt. Ltd., ISBN 8120335678

Sashkin, M., Kiser, K.J., 1993, Putting total quality management to work: what TQM means, how to use it and how to sustain it over the long run, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, ISBN 1881052230

Smylie, M.A., 2009, Continuous school improvement, Corwin Press, ISBN 1412936896

Subburraj, 2005, Total Quality Management, Tata McGraw-Hill, ISBN 0070223971

2010, Total Quality Management, Investopedia, http://www.investopedia.com/terms/t/total-quality-management-tqm.asp last accessed on January 28, 2011

Total Quality Management, Management Help, http://managementhelp.org/quality/tqm/tqm.htm last accessed on January 28, 2011