Testing success factors for manufacturing BPR project phases

This study aims to identify prescriptions for success proposed in the literature and empirically test the relationships between proposed success factors and the extent to which each business process reengineering (BPR) project phase benefited from their presence. A usable sample of 212 top manufacturing managers (plant managers or above) shared their organizations’ experience regarding their last BPR project implementation. The sample shows good representation based on company size (gross revenues industry subsectors), self-rated IT sophistication, top managers titles, and self-rated degree of knowledge about the specific BPR project implementation they have addressed. Results indicate that some success factors are more or less important to a particular project phase. Except for the insignificant relationship between project inception and process change/redesign phase, the relationships between the other phases are all significant and in some cases seem to represent a major determinant of success in the subsequent phase. The most important limitation is that new company processes will be developed in the future owing to changing regulations, improved services, new managerial policy, and/or new technologies. These processes may require different success factors; thus, researchers must continue their efforts to identify new success factors and empirically test their importance in practice. Managers can increase the chances for overall BPR project success and success in each phase by ensuring that the prescribed success factors are in place before they start or as they pursue the project. Several managerial insights and implications are discussed. BPR projects by their very nature are very expensive to prototype, forcing companies to follow a sequential methodology for changing and implementing new processes. This is the first study identifying and testing the success factors for each BPR project phase.


Introduction
Business process reengineering (BPR) has been widely recognized as an important component of business innovation. Over the last decade, the definition for BPR and its success factors have been widely discussed. Traditionally, the definition for a BPR project calls for substantial changes to one or more business processes, in contrast with small incremental changes over time through smaller and many times more informal projects. BPR within the manufacturing sector has received considerable attention from researchers [12,19,35,39,[44][45][46] as to its benefits and success factors. BPR projects deal with "dramatic changes" to business processes, in contrast with a wide variety of methods which are mostly based on "continuous improvement." Some authors have also proposed BPR as an integral part of the product development process [13,49]. While the promises from BPR project implementation among manufacturing companies have been impressive in many cases [12,26,38,43,50,55], in practice the encountered failures and problems are also rather numerous [33,34].
Historically, Cafasso [8] estimated that approximately one fourth of 300 reengineering projects in North America were not meeting their goals, and that for industry at large, the figure may be closer to 70 %. More specifically, many managers stated that the actual project benefits fell short of expectations along the dimensions of customer service, process timeliness, quality, cost reduction, competitiveness, improved technology, and revenues [25]. Despite the recognized importance of creating an environment in which reengineering will succeed [19,[33][34][35], some companies in the past have had great difficulty successfully completing their BPR projects [21,35]. Succumbing to the pressure to produce quick results, many managers who implemented BPR have ignored the massive changes in organizational structure, misused and alienated subordinates, sold off solid businesses, neglected important research and development, and hindered the necessary modernization of their facilities [11,32,35]. With so many problems why are organizations still trying to implement BPR projects? Basically, they have no choice since the need for dramatic improvements to business processes are many times related to organization survival as well as prosperity [12,13,26,38,46,49,51].
The more recent BPR implementations in the manufacturing area, in general, seem more successful than the reports from the last decade [19,24,52]. But risks and implementation problems still abound [9,[33][34][35]48]. Specifically, some researchers have found that the required change process is far from easy and many projects have turned into learning experiences about how organizations should or should not manage major changes [28,33,48,54]. A major question still remaining is whether or not the actions or factors proposed in the literature are necessary for success, if implemented will actually increase the chances for more successful company BPR projects in the future. Therefore, in this study, we identify the prescriptions for success proposed in the literature and empirically test the relationships between these proposed success factors and the expected benefits from each BPR project phase. In other words, the primary objective is to assess the extent to which the proposed success factors contributed to the success of each project phase. If this objective could be accomplished, BPR project managers could focus on ensuring that the proposed success factors are present before the next phase or the project is attempted. The next section defines each of the major constructs in this study: BPR project success factors and project phases. That is followed by sections on the methodology used, data analysis and results, and conclusions, implications and recommendations to managers and researchers.
2 Literature review and theoretical framework

Major constructs
Business process reengineering success factors are what managers should do to increase the likelihood that a BPR project will benefit their organization. The literature contains personal opinions and case studies prescribing one or more factors deemed important for BPR success. Most are common sense, such as driving BPR projects using customer demand, competitive pressures, and to improve financial performance [18,19,35,41,46]. Bringing in industry specialists, employee education, and reeducation are widely recognized. Employees must be taught the reengineering process, how it differs from existing work patterns, and what role they play [18]. Managers are also encouraged to reconsider reward mechanisms and to keep the reengineered organization moving forward, to instill the willingness to share information, and to use hands-on experience when redesigning processes [18,54]. Farmer [17] proposes several important factors: (1) using project champions; (2) having an organized and well-disciplined attack plan; (3) employing a rigorous and detailed analytical process to develop a rough-cut design and identify major issues; (4) avoiding traditional thinkers as team members; (5) carefully setting up planning details for tooling, scheduling, maintenance, storage, etc., before implementation; (6) having a defined project structure [5]; (7) regularly scheduled meetings involving project manager with staff in all structural levels to focus attention; (8) using process mapping to distinguish productive activities from those that are non-value-added [14]; and (9) clearly defining and communicating the project's mission and vision. Bowns and McNulty [6], and Gulden and Reck [22] also list important factors: (1) reengineering results from large-scale changes to a business process, organizational structures, management systems and values, so executives must carefully target critical (though crossfunctional) business processes; (2) executives should correct organizational procedures focused on satisfying internal demands rather than the marketplace; and (3) focus on outcome rather than task. Other factors proposed are: (1) technology is viewed as an enabler, not a solution [27]; (2) let doers be the decision makers [23]; (3) use automation to reduce costs and response times [20]; (4) do not compromise quality improvements [16,31]; (5) project initiated and led by top managers accountable for the project's success [6,29]; (6) use surveys to find what's working; (7) be open about what you're doing, when, and why [5,37,47]; and (8) adopt an integrated planning approach [21,54]. Success factors identified and collected from the literature are summarized in Table 1 which shows the arithmetic mean and standard deviation for each item based on the scale used. These figures indicate the general level of company implementation of each success factor and intercompany variance. Many authors discuss BPR success factors without first explicitly defining BPR success, which we define as the extent to which, after being operational for at least 1 year, the project provided specific benefits to the whole organization. We studied the success factors' impact on BPR projects as they advanced through the major development/implementation process phases. Formally identifying project phases has been widely used for decades and BPR projects are no exception. Typically, the general phases include many possible task and subphases such as: feasibility assessment, project selection, project team formation, project planning, processes analysis and documentation, redesigning changes to existing processes and new processes, necessary resources acquisition and implementing planned changes, and adopting new processes and assessing results after a reasonable operational time. Different authors combine these BPR project lifecycle phases into fewer or more detailed frameworks depending on their objectives. The literature contains numerous references to project development and implementation methods thought to be useful for project success [1,4,30,53]. Proposed methods in some cases target specific tasks necessary to accomplish specific BPR project development/implementation phases [3,15]. In other cases, the proposed methods take a more holistic BPR development/implementation view [2,4,36,40]. For exploratory purposes, we chose a comprehensive but parsimonious BPR project development and implementation view, which encompasses five distinct general phases: 1. Project inception identifies and selects BPR projects whose importance is widely recognized by staff, projects where the managers involved all agree that it is likely to have widespread benefits, and/or projects considered winners among all investment alternatives. 2. Processes definition/analysis identifies and defines important processes involved and their relationships/linkages, ensuring that each process was well understood, how it was or has been performed and the project's added value to the organization. 3. Processes change/redesign ensures that proposed changes provide clear benefits from processes that are simplified and/or increased added value to the company by improving effectiveness and/or efficiency. 4. Changes implementation/adoption produces changed processes that are accepted by the affected employees and departments, and promotes good cooperation and support by all involved to ensure the new processes operate well. 5. Project benefits assessment when corporate managers and/or outsiders attempt to measure the results from the organization's BPR project investment after the changes have been operational for a reasonable time. This phase by far has been studied more widely and in greater depth. Many companies have derived significant benefits from their BPR experience. Researchers have reported major improvements in quality, customer satisfaction, productivity (reduced costs, time reductions, etc.), and profitability (return on assets, return on equity, etc.) at companies which completed reengineering projects [5,6,12,18,29,41,43,55]. The benefits vary dramatically from project to project and company to company, including: (1) reduced floor space and labor requirements, (2) material handling, (3) improved employee empowerment and morale, (4) improved communications between operational units, and (5) improved quality [17].
Based on the literature, desirable results expected from each phase and the organization benefits from BPR project operationalization are presented in Table 2 which shows the arithmetic mean and standard deviation for each item based on the scale used. The figures provide an indication of the general level of company success along each item and the intercompany variance.

Questionnaire development
As discussed earlier, the list of success factors and project phases with their respective tasks were assembled from the literature. For each item, a measuring scale was added for data collection. Some demographic items such as company size and IT sophistication were added to possibly detect response bias. Similarly, respondent demographics such as titles and knowledge about the BPR project were added to the questionnaire. Five practitioners with BPR experience and personally known to the researchers were asked to review and test the questionnaire. That is discussed further under Section 3.5.

Sampling and data collection
Researchers have found that managers who have a broad view of an organization are in the best position to address that organization's environment, available resources, workflow patterns, and values [7]. Therefore, for this study, top manufacturing managers are likely to be the most appropriate subjects regarding major changes to manufacturing processes. A national directory of manufacturing professionals was used to randomly select 1,500 top manufacturing managers. A usable sample of 212 top manufacturing managers (plant managers or above) shared their organizations' experience regarding their last BPR project implementation. The response rate of 14 % (212/1,500) is normal for exploratory studies of this type. While these managers are based in the USA, many work for multinational companies with manufacturing facilities in the USA. A questionnaire was sent directly to the top manufacturing manager with a cover letter explaining the purpose of the study, asking for participation, and offering to share the results. For this study, respondents were asked to address the questions regarding BPR/system implementation based on the most recent project (but fully operational for at least 1 year) of significance to their company, where at least "some of the processes involved were substantially redesigned."

Sample description
The sample demographics for the companies and the participants in this field test are presented in Table 3. The sample shows good representation based on company size (gross revenues), industry subsectors, and self-rated IT sophistication. Also, the sample shows good representation of top managers based on their titles and self-rated degree of knowledge about the specific BPR project implementation they have addressed.

Construct measurement
Respondents rated all items comprising the constructs below using the scales 1 (not at all), 2 (to a minor extent), 3 (to a moderate extent), 4 (to a large extent), and 5 (to a great extent). The average rating for the respective subitem represents the overall measure for each construct. Table 1 factors, collected from the literature, were not automatically combined to represent a major success factor measure. Instead, as shown in Table 4, factor analysis, using Varimax rotation, produced five separate success factor subgroups. Therefore, subsequent analyses use these subgroups. Original success factor 19 loaded ambiguously into more than one factor so it was discarded.

Measuring success in each project phase
The BPR project development and implementation process encompassed the five general phases discussed earlier. Desirable results expected or benefits from each BPR development/implementation process phase, proposed in the literature, were provided for respondents to rate the extent to which each was true in relation to their particular BPR project. The average ratings and the standard deviation for each item are shown in Table 2. For each phase, factor analysis (not shown) produced a one-factor solution; thus, for each questionnaire, items were averaged to produce a measure for the specific phase results. These measures were used for further analysis.
Phase 1: Project inception-three items representing desirable results expected from this phase were presented to the respondents for rating: the need for the BPR project was well recognized in our company, managers agreed that the project had widespread benefits for our company, and among all investment alternatives, this project was the clear winner. Phase 2: Processes definition/analysis-three items were presented to the respondents for rating: the BPR team clearly identified the important processes and their relationships/linkages, each process was well understood regarding how it was performed, and the added value to the company from each process was well understood. Phase 3: Processes change/redesign-two items were presented to the respondents for rating: process changes clearly simplified and/or increased added value to the company, and improved company effectiveness and/or efficiency was the main requirement behind any process change. Phase 4: Changes implementation/adoption-two items were rated by the respondents: the changed processes were fully accepted by the affected employees and departments, and there was good cooperation and support to ensure the new processes operated smoothly. Phase 5: Project benefits assessment-after completing the project and making the changes operational for at least 1 year, five major potential BPR benefits to the organization, as proposed in the literature, were provided. Respondents rated the extent to which each has been derived from the particular BPR project.

Measures validity and reliability
Despite the study's exploratory nature, we took several precautions to ensure validity. Recommendations by Carmines and Zeller [10] were followed. To ensure content validity, the relevant literature was reviewed to understand each major construct's important aspects and components, and not to neglect any important dimension. To reduce nonrandom errors, the main threat to a construct's validity, practitioners with substantial experience managing major organization changes reviewed the questionnaire for validity (measuring the phenomena intended), completeness (including all relevant items), and readability (making it unlikely that subjects will misinterpret a particular question). A few questions were reworded to improve readability. As Table 5 indicates, the internal consistency reliability coefficients (Cronbach's alpha) for the study's scales are well above 0.5 deemed acceptable for exploratory studies [42].

Data analysis and results
The statistical computations for this study are fairly simple and straight forward. Means and standard deviations (Tables 1, 2, and 5) were computed for the success factors and the BPR project phase's expected results/benefits. Since for each major variable we are using averages from several ordinal components, Pearson's correlation coefficients (Table 5) were computed to measure relationship strengths between each subgroup and the BPR expected results/benefits measures for each project phase. To eliminate multi colinearity among the success factors, Table 6 shows the results from the stepwise multivariate regression analysis. This table shows the variance (percentage) in the results/benefits measures for each phase which is explained by each success factor subgroup as it entered the regression equation. Significant total variance in the benefits measure was explained (percentages ranging from 43 to 65 %) by the success factor subgroups, providing strong support for the prescriptions on what needs to be done by managers to increase the likelihood that BPR projects will provide the expected results/benefits outlined in this study.

Conclusions, implications, and recommendations
The originality of this study comes from empirically testing the relationships between BPR success factors proposed in the literature and the actual benefits in practice. Currently, no other study examines BPR success factors at the project phase level, with the major implications for project management. While we originally expected that all the success factors proposed in the literature would be important to every BPR project phase, our results indicate that some success factors are more or less important to a particular project phase. Table 5 indicates that, except for the insignificant relationship between project inception and process change/redesign phase, the relationships between the other phases are all significant and in some cases seem to represent a major determinant of success in the subsequent phase. Table 5 also shows the most important factors necessary for success in a specific phase. Based on the specific order in which the independent variables entered the regression equation, Table 6 indicates the success factors that account for the largest percentage of the variance in the ratings for success in each phase. For example, leadership/motivation accounts for 27 % of the variance in the ratings for project inception. Combined with team cohesiveness and process expertise available, these three variables explain 43 % of the variance for the performance ratings in the project inception phase. Last, Table 7 summarizes and integrates the results presented in Tables 5 and 6.

Recommendations to practitioners
Based on results shown in Table 7, BPR project managers should increase the chances for success in each phase by ensuring that the corresponding success factors are in place. Some success factors' importance is pervasive to a greater or lesser extent to most project phases, i.e., available expertise about the processes being redesigned and having an Table 5 Correlations In parentheses are Cronbach's alpha reliability coefficients NS not significant *p<0.05; **p<0.01 effective BPR project management process. Also, results indicate that some success factors are primarily important to completing a particular project phase, e.g., strong project leadership and motivation success factor items are primarily important during the starting phase and the project's implementation phase when resources commitment and political issues may become more pronounced. Similarly, effective technical support becomes more pronounced during the two last project phases. Thus, it becomes an important objective for project managers to preemptively ensure that before the project starts, the required success factors will be in place as the project advances.

A report card on overall benefits from company BPR projects
Results indicate that many companies have derived many benefits from completing their BPR projects; however on average, company benefits have been rated only moderate. The extent to which companies are deriving specific benefits from their BPR projects can be seen in item 5 of Table 2.
The specific overall project benefits, which have been derived somewhere between a "moderate extent" and a "major extent," are represented by increases in productivity, improved service quality and personnel resources, and improved user/customer satisfaction from the reengineered processes. Unfortunately, increased company profitability has on average only been derived somewhere between "to a minor extent" and "a moderate extent." Why is there so much difference in overall results from BPR projects among manufacturing companies, as indicated by the relatively large standard deviations? A strong clue is found in the wide diversity (also shown by relatively large standard deviations) in the extent to which individual companies are doing what has been recommended as important for successfully implementing BPR projects. The average and standard deviations for the items prescribed in the literature are shown in Table 1. On average, managers have "to a major extent" used BPR project leaders with politically powerful position in the organization hierarchy. The relatively small standard deviation around the average for this item shows that most companies are doing that. With a somewhat wider difference (larger standard deviation) in behavior, on average, companies have to a significant extent started their BPR projects motivated by competitive pressure and a need for better performance. On the other hand, BPR project managers ignore some prescriptions for increasing the likelihood of BPR success. While the variance from company to company is relatively wide, on average, they have only from a "minor extent" to a "moderate extent" followed some important prescriptions for success (i.e., commitment to continuous improvement, viewing technology as an enabler to implement business changes, performing a thorough process analysis to identify and eliminate process activities, which add no value to the ultimate target process beneficiaries, and carefully planning for project details before implementation).  Table 4 results from factor analysis, the items prescribed in the literature as important for BPR success belong together as five separate groups addressing: (1) project team cohesiveness, (2) process used by the project team to implement the BPR project, (3) expertise available to the project team regarding the processes being redesigned/reengineered, (4) IT support quality extended to the project, and (5) project leadership and motivation. At the bottom of Table 6, these five-factor groups explain 65 % of the variance in the benefits derived from BPR projects. Thus, it behooves all managers in general, and BPR project leaders, to particularly focus attention on the items composing these groups, to ensure that before embarking on expensive BPR projects their organizations have these requirements for success in place.
Our study's results support the notion that ensuring project team cross-functionality is important. Fortunately, many companies have done that, but many did not and paid the price (lower benefits). It is important that the project team focuses on accomplishing BPR project results and not worry about politics within the BPR project team or within the particular department, which individual team members are representing. The team should have representatives from all departments related to the processes being redesigned and these representatives must be taught to communicate freely, receive/provide feedback on work progress and what is working according to the project plans. Despite creativity in process redesign, BPR team members must be taught that accountability for accomplishing their tasks and goals is an important ingredient for ultimate team success.
Another area deserving special attention from company managers is addressing what the BPR project team must do while performing their duties. Results indicate that, on average, team members are not doing as much as they probably should in this area. This is one area that may be viewed as bureaucratic, tedious work, requiring managerial discipline and some top-down cajoling. The prescribed factor groups are strongly correlated with the extent BPR benefits were derived, therefore the project team should: (1) clearly define roles, tasks, and expectations for individuals and the project team as a whole; (2) perform a thorough process analysis to identify and eliminate non-value-added activities as an integral process redesign effort; (3) have regularly scheduled meetings between project managers and team members, and for larger projects, meetings between managers and each organization level; (4) develop a detailed plan covering specific requirements such as personnel, tools, software, procedures, and maintenance before the project implementation phase starts; and (5) keep in mind that technology alone is never a solution but an enabler for the new/redesigned business processes.
Three factors (process expertise available, tech support effectiveness, and project leadership/motivation) are not as strongly correlated with the extent to which the organization derived BPR benefits. One might interpret that as if these factors are not as important as team crossfunctionality and how the BPR teams work. However, a more likely explanation may be that the relatively low standard deviations for these factors (indicating that most companies performed more evenly) provide lower • Effective technical support • Effective BPR process discriminatory power thus lower correlations with the benefits from BPR projects. Nevertheless, it is important that company managers strive to: (1) improve their BPR team performance regarding process expertise, (2) not attempt to reengineer several processes all at once, (3) work closely with their IT department in general and particularly with BPR project IT requirement planners, (4) provide leadership and commitment for continuous improvement to the company's business processes, and (5) select BPR projects that have strategic importance.

Study limitations and future research opportunities
This study's two major objectives: (1) identifying prescriptions for manufacturing companies BPR project success proposed in the literature and (2) empirically testing the relationships between these success factors and the extent to which the BPR project benefits have been derived for each BPR project phase, were accomplished. Nevertheless, our work has limitations that should be viewed as opportunities for future research such as understanding why/how individual success factors affect the success of different phases to varying degrees. The most important limitation is that, despite the extensive literature search and validation procedures, it is possible that other BPR success factors are neglected in the literature.
Quite likely, new company processes will be developed in the future owing to changing regulations, improved services, new managerial policy, and/or new technologies; these processes may require different success factors. Researchers must continue their efforts to identify new success factors and empirically test their importance in practice.
On the data analysis/research design side, a research opportunity stems from the need for longitudinal studies to more clearly establish cause and effect relationships between the main study variables. Multivariate statistical analysis should be conducted to identify variables that mediate or moderate the relationships between the BPR success determinants we studied and actual BPR benefits. Potentially important in this case is work exploring the importance of company size, industry sector as moderating variables. Other BPR success measures, which emphasize specific BPR project targets such as profitability, time to market, or customer satisfaction, may be more appropriate for measuring project success. Overall, despite these limitations, this study makes a significant contribution to improve the chances for manufacturing company BPR implementation success.