Development of business process reengineering methodology for a commercial airline.

Over the past few years, much attention has been given to the concept of Business Process Reengineering (BPR) and its implementation by various companies as a key strategy to regain or improve their competitive edge in the marketplace. BPR is a new business concept for organizational review that involves a fundamental rethinking and systematic redesign of core business processes supported by advance information technology to achieve sustainable step improvements in measures of performance . The aim of this research was to develop a BPR methodology for a commercial airline that could be used for the various levels and types of operation within the airline business today. The increasing complexity and variety of operations and processes within the airline industry and at the same time the increased interest in BPR as a way to change and improvement to meet current and future challenges are all facts that emphasis the need to tailor a generic BPR methodology to suit the particular requirements of a commercial airline. To achieve the research aim, an extensive review of literature was undertaken to understand the basics and roots of the BPR concept and to establish the need for a BPR methodology for airline companies. The research method also involved a review of current BPR practice and comparison of some famous BPR methodologies. This review and comparison had contributed to develop the basis for the proposed BPR methodology. A comprehensive review and comparative analysis of both American Airlines and Saudi Airlines BPR methodologies was undertaken to stress on their strengths and to overcome their shortcomings which used later to form the basis for the proposed BPR methodology for a commercial airline. In addition to the findings of each stage of this research, another factor was contributed to the development of the proposed methodology is the extensive experience gained by the author in managing and implementing the BPR projects in Saudi Airlines. The proposed BPR methodology represents a business process management model that ensures for the airline the achievement of process awareness, process ownership and process alignment with the airline vision and strategies. It helps to focus the airline effort on core business processes that add value to the end customer of the airline and maintain the required incremental improvement during the continuous improvement phase which is well defined and linked to the entire BPR effort . In addition, the proposed methodology was developed within the airline industry. This involves the application of the roots of this methodology in both American Airlines and Saudia in major BPR projects. Therefore, the proposed BPR methodology has the characteristic of being evolved and tested within airline industry which increase the probability of successful implementation of this methodology for any commercial airline. Indeed, this research has contributed a lot to the development and success of the BPR program within Saudi Arabian Airlines and produced many tangible benefits. Recommendations for further work with respect to some key tools and techniques that needed to support and facilitate the implementation of the proposed BPR methodology are provided