Examples of BPR (from http://filebox.vt.edu/users/hmeyer2/examples.html)
Taco Bell
Taco Bell created the K-Minus program (Kitchenless restaurant) based on their belief that they are a retail service company, not a manufacturing company. In the new process, meat, beans, corn shells, lettuce, tomatoes and cheese for their products are prepared outside of the restaurant in central commissaries. At the Taco Bell restaurants, the food ingredients are prepared when ordered for customer consumption. Taco Bell cites the following results: greater quality control, better employee morale, fewer employee accidents accidents and injuries (due to preparation task off-site), big savings and more time to focus on the customer business processes. Currently they are redefining how to deliver their food services, by taking their food service to places where people gather such as dining centers, schools, universities, airport, airport, and stadiums. Taco Bell has progressed from a $500 million regional company in 1982 to a $3 billion national company. (Hammer and Champy 1993, p 178-179).
Hallmark
Using reengineering, Hallmark, redesigned the process they used to bring new card concepts to market. Their product cycle time was approximately 3 years. The growing trend of more and more niche markets convinced Hallmark executives that the product development process needed changing. The company's goal was to get new products to market within one year. Hallmark has always assumed that the product development was comprised comprised mostly of printing and production rework time. Much to their surprise twothirds of the time was spent in developing the plan and concept for the card. They also found that from the time a concept was given to the creative staff, numerous hand-offs were completed. The concept spent 90% of the time within the creative staff sitting in someone's in/out slot. In developing a new line of cards in 1991 Hallmark used BPR to create a crossfunctional team approach to product development bring the new card to market 8 months ahead of schedule. (Hammer and Champy 1993, p 166-167).
U.S. Sprint
U. S. Sprint is the third largest U.S. telecommunication company facing fierce competition. Their business issues included a customer service and billing processes that was not keeping pace with their expanding business and the need to increase customer retention and satisfaction. Using BPR they instituted an invoice-processing system in which Service Agents review customer accounts every six months to ensure customers are sign-up for the services that meet their calling needs and save them money. This effort has helped to decrease U.S. Sprint's customer turnover rate. (Manganelli and Klien, 1994 p. 300-301)
Connecticut Mutual Life
Connecticut Mutual Life Insurance, the sixth oldest American life insurer with approximately 1.3 million policyholders, was facing business issues stemming from the company's financial rating, fragmented operations, labor/paper intensive processes and a small work force that was over burden. The fragmented operation and unconnected systems caused both policyholders and agents to have to interact with several departments of the company at one time to resolve problems or provide service. To resolve this issue the company redesigned its computer system from a host-based system that had been configured to meet the companies vertical business needs. The new system consisted of a client/server document management system with relational databases that provides its representatives with a client's complete record. This action resulted in increased response time to the policyholder and increased productivity. (Manganelli and Klien, 1994 p. 301-302)
