Putting an engine into re‐engineering: toward a process‐oriented organisation

Process re‐engineering, a recently popularised phenomenon, has been advocated as a change management strategy that can be used to refocus organisational tasks into processes so that dramatic performance improvements in critical, contemporary measures of performance such as cost, quality service, and speed can be achieved. This paper suggests that before an organisation can re‐engineer its processes they must first be engineered. Inherent within the philosophy of total quality management (TQM) is the notion of being process oriented. This paper argues that a process should be engineered by utilising the philosophical foundations of TQM. Furthermore, both the technical and social inputs of a process must be designed simultaneously and be performed congruently. When engineered processes are no longer considered to be effective and efficient, and dramatic performance improvements are sought, then they should be re‐engineered, specifically encouraging breakthrough performance improvements and innovative ways of working and delivering products or services.