Development and assessment of a methodology for the business process improvement

Abstract

There appears to be an ever insatiable demand from markets for organisations to improve their products and services. In response, the concept of Business Process Improvement (BPI) has been developed in recent years as a useful aid. Unfortunately, there is no robust methodology that practitioners can use to apply this concept. Therefore, the intention of this research is to provide a generic and practical methodology to support the implementation of business process improvement within organisations. The research described in this thesis has set out to form a BPI methodology through a structured research programme. A pilot methodology was formed on the basis of existing contributions in the literature. This was initially refined through discussion with experts in the field, and a primary field trial. After refinement, the methodology was more thoroughly tested through case studies at three companies. The fully tested and refined methodology is presented as a workbook in the appendix of this thesis. The outcome of this research is a structured step by step methodology which is an aid to BPI. This methodology takes the practitioner through such steps as; understanding business needs, understanding the process, redesigning the process, implementing the new process, and reviewing the new process. The outcome of executing the methodology is a documented business process. The work described in this thesis has made a significant contribution to the knowledge on methodologies for BPI. It has also demonstrated that such methodologies can be formed and tested rigorously in an industrial context.