A Study Of Business Process Re-engineering Based On Lean Thinking And Its Methods

The revolution of national companies of China in the early and middle 1990's focuses on "property right" and "establishing modern company system", but the internal management has been overlooked by most companies. Since China entered WTO, Chinese National companies faced changing customer demand and more competitive market environment, and then won less and less profits. The private-owned companies which emerged during this periods have also lost control of their companies because of their amazing growth speed. The serious market environment compelled Chinese companies pay more attention to the improvement of inner management level.The prevailing theory of BPR (Business Process Re-engineering) in developed countries provided our companies a possible changing method in the early 1990's. However, because the inner weakness of BPR theory and mistaking of companies, many failing cases occurred. Chinese people have forgotten BPR step by step. With the rising of ERP (Enterprise Resources Planning) in China, BPR went into people's sight once again as a necessary condition of ERP. But the application method of BPR has not yet been solved thoroughly.This paper compares BPR with Lean Production (LP) and Lean Thinking, which were invented by TOYOTA, and then finds they were similar in core purpose and meaning. It is quite possible to apply BPR based on Lean Thinking and LP. The study also finds some cases supporting this idea. The author thinks it is advisable to apply BPR with Lean method, because Chinese companies generally lack capital, and that changing risks may be avoided by using this method. Based on deep study of survey, theories and cases, the writer tries to provide a new method called Lean-BPR, which should apply in management standardization, process design, organization reengineering, and changing management of BPR project. Some adjustments of LP methods were made in this theory to fit the characters of business process. Finally, the article re-engineers the case of TELECO Corporation with lean method, which proved the feasibility and advantages of Lean-BPR.In a word, this paper tries to discover a way of BPR, which adapts to Chinese environment and characters, in order to differ from western way, which is based on vast IT investment. However this theory may exist quite a lot of bugs and weakness, so I hope the readers of this paper could help me without any misgiving.