Continuous Improvement, Total Quality Management, Lean and BPR have been around for some time. Their principles and objectives remain valid, and their use as improvement techniques is perhaps more prevalent than ever.
This paper provides an overview of Business Process Reengineering (BPR) and Business Process Outsourcing (BPO). It is aimed at Procurement and Supply Management (P&SM) professionals with a general interest in business issues, and at those who might be involved in, or be affected by, BPR/BPO initiatives. It also explains how and why the two fields are linked, and gives an overview of how such exercises can be viewed as a journey from continuous improvement through to full blown outsourcing (the subject of another paper in the CIPS Knowledge Works series), and back to continuous improvement again.
More specifically, the learning outcomes for this paper aim to provide an understanding of:
Return to Continuous Improvement topic.
Return to Efficiency topic.
Return to Understand Need - Market and Options Assessment topic.
Kaizen is a management strategy that focuses on constant, process-oriented improvement (Imai, 1986)
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A new era is changing the procurement function, creating broader and deeper roles where buyers also need to be value brokers, and capture, retain and manage talent (Supply Management)
A standard is an agreed and repeatable way of doing something. A standard is a collective work that is created by bringing together the expertise and experience of all interested...