| Over the past 15 years, continuous quality improvement and quality assurance efforts had achieved maximum operational benefits at Cadbury Schweppes Beverages Division and additional improvements were expected to require a different approach. The research question investigated was: "Given a quality improved manufacturing process, what operational efficiencies and/or cost savings to improve the company's competitive position can be realized by reengineering the process control system in a soft drink production operation?" The reengineering focused on the process control system of the production line. It involved benchmarking, applying key performance indicators (KPI), and incorporating KPI information in the existing enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, enabling continuous support for maximizing competitive advantage.; The model and theory basis framing this research was Value Chain Model (Porter, 1985) and Business Process Reengineering by Hammer and Champy (1990). The primary activities of the Value Chain Model defined the key enterprise components for decision strategies to achieve and sustain competitive advantage, while including the interdependencies of competitive advantage (cost, differentiation and the scope of the firm's activities). KPIs (Neely & Mills, 1994) offered an ideal way to measure the reengineering impacts since they focus on those activities which create the most value for the enterprise.; The methodology of this study was a field experiment pilot study conducted at a single soft drink beverage plant. Longitudinal in nature, it compared ex post facto KPI baseline performance measures determined prior to the control system reengineering with KPI values measured throughout the pilot's first year of operation. A purposive sample used an existing multi-line production plant in the Caribbean. Data collection involved extracting and verifying real time process measurements using computer software implemented prior to the reengineering intervention. The independent treatment variable was the control system reengineering (BPR) based on a value chain analysis. The dependent variable was competitive advantage via production line performance as measured by the KPIs. Each represented a dimension of competitive advantage. Data analyses used Statistical Process Control charts of the monthly KPI values to demonstrate a continuous test of significance on improvement. Success was determined based on decreased variability and pattern criteria defining processes "in control", t-tests of significant difference between the beginning and ending KPI values, as well as fiscal criteria.; Results of this study confirm that Value Chain based reengineering of the control system processes of the beverage production line can result in overall performance improvements of the processes critical to achieving and sustaining competitive advantage. Furthermore, timely identification of problem situations to be investigated and corrected is achievable using process control charts for each of the KPIs being tracked. As visual aids, the control charts also make it easier to see the changes in the KPIs over time, as well as the interdependencies among the KPIs. With the start of the reengineering intervention, almost immediately {dollar}1,278,760 worth of operational value improvement opportunities were identified. Strategic leadership decided to replicate this approach as the method for a two-staged enterprise-wide deployment of their KPI-based decision support system. Stage 1 will be to plants in Europe, Africa and Australia, as well as several large bottlers in the US. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)... |
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