Business process redesign to support the adoption of e-business for the improvement of supply chain management : innovation report

In recent years companies across different sectors have been facing a new competitive environment, characterized by an increase in the number of competitors, shorter product cycles and changing customer demand. In order to cope with these challenges and to achieve competitive advantage, companies are engaged in alliances and partnerships with other organizations and closer collaboration with suppliers and customers. Accordingly companies have turned their attention towards improving the management of their supply chains to achieve competitive advantage. One way to improve the management of supply chain is through process integration, which offers potential benefits such as cost reduction, creation of value by increasing profits, market share and strengthening competitive position. E-business has been considered by both researchers and companies as an option to construct supply chain integration. However evidence found in the e-business and supply chain literature shows a number of technical and organizational challenges faced by organizations regarding the use and adoption of e-business for the improvement of supply chain management (SCM). One of the organizational challenges is the necessity to change business processes to support the successful adoption and use of e-business technologies. This challenge has been highlighted in the supply chain and e-business literature to be at the core of a successful adoption and use of e-business. A literature search and review was conducted to find a methodology to conduct business process redesign (BPR) to adopt e-business for SCM improvement. From the review it was found that although a number of methodologies exist on business process redesign, supply chain redesign and e-business process design there is a lack of an integrated methodology to conduct business process redesign to support e-business adoption for supply chain management improvement. Through an inductive approach of pattern recognition from reviewing different methodologies (Kettinger, Teng and Guha, 1997) in three different domains: business process redesign, supply chain redesign and e-business process design, a methodology embedded within an action research approach to conduct business process redesign is proposed to support e-business technologies adoption for supply chain management improvement. This proposed BPR methodology can potentially be adapted to any company on any sector, this is possible due to the type of techniques and methods employed in the methodology which can be used on any BPR project to support the adoption of e-business for the improvement of supply chain management. This methodology is tested and validated through a practical application in an independent Airline Maintenance Repair and Overhaul (MRO) provider giving as a result a redesign of the component services process. This methodology will require further validation; however results from its application in an independent airline MRO provider show it can clearly guide and produce a business process redesign to support e-business adoption for supply chain management improvement.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceConsejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (Mexico) (CONACYT)GBUnited Kingdo