Thesis (M.S. in Information Technology Management)--Naval Postgraduate School, March 2003. / Thesis advisor(s): Thomas Housel, Glenn Cook. Includes bibliographical references (p. 87-90). Also available online.

published_or_final_version / Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering / Master / Master of Philosophy

Increasingly, companies around the world are reengineering their business process to be more profitable and to improve their customer satisfaction. The technique used is often known as Business Process Reengineering (BPR) which requires radical change in the structure of the company and offers high achievement on some performance dimensions. Statistics show that as many as 70% of large companies are involved in BPR projects and many others plan to begin projects soon. It also shows that up to 70-75% of these BPR projects fail. There are a few reasons for this high rate of failure. Lack of proper and well documented methodology is one main reason. It could also be due to unrealistic scope and expectation of the project, underestimating the time and cost involved, and the effect of company type on BPR projects. In this study a well structured methodology for BPR is proposed. The methodology includes several new concepts and tools orderly organised to ease the hardship of reengineering. Information Technology (IT) has been used as a tool to redesign the company in the form of a simulation tool. It has also been used as a tool within the company to automate the activities involved in the business process. The methodology was tested in industrial case studies and the results were quite satisfactory. The effect of company type on BPR was also tested. For Make-to-stock and Make/Assemble-to-order types of company, reengineering can have great impact. The effect of IT on BPR has been tested. IT if implemented by itself can improve the performance in the magnitude of 10-15%, and if implemented within the framework of BPR can have impact of 40-50% on the business. The simulation package of TOPIX was used for the first time in a manufacturing environment and it proved to be satisfactory software for BPR.

Thesis (M.P.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 78-82).

Thesis (M. Phil.)--University of Hong Kong, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 167-171).

Thesis (M.P.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 78-82). Also available in print.

M.Comm. / Business process reengineering seeks radical rather than merely continuous improvement. escalates the efforts of just-in-time and total quality management to aUkI e process orientation a strategic tool and a core co petence of the organisation. Business process reengineering concentrates on core business processes. To quote Michael ammer, "The job of business reengineering is to rip the guts out of an organisation and reassemble them in the context of today's changing business worl 99 (An ews, 1994:1). Correctly implemented, business process reengineering should considerably improve profits, as well as strengthen and revitalise an organisation. Business process ree gineering is the fundamental) re-design of business processes to achieve dramatic improvement. Reengineering is about finding or inventing better ways to give customers what they want while simultaneously achieving huge gains in performance and productivity. The focus is on finding the best, most effacient way to deliver to customers what they want - and this focus lands squarely on core processes. Core processes create a product or service of value to external customers d are a key source of competitive advantage. Reaping the benefits of massive reengineering efforts are not easy. Successfully challenging and changing existing paradigms take skilful leadership which focuses on two entwined aspects of reengineering - the technical side and the human side. The technical side addresses the steps to reinvent the process. The human side addresses the creation of an organisation in which the reinvented process ca i thrive. ecause of the drastic nature of change in reengineering efforts, the human side is particularly important. A successful reengineering project requires the perfect marriage of the technical and the human elements. this study, the concept of business process reengineering, with reference to the different stages and the human side of the process, are dealt with

The current business world is becoming more and more dependent on electronic business. Many paper documents have been made obsolete by electronic documents, as they are easier to automate and track than paper documents. The increased use of computers within organizations has therefore, lead to an increase in use of workflow software products. The increased use of computer-based workflow has allowed organizations to conduct more types of electronic business. This has lead to electronic business crossing organizational boundaries and subsequently a need for heterogeneous workflow systems. For organizations to use heterogeneous workflow systems they must perform their duties in a seamless and secure manner. It is the author’s belief that History-based Separation of Duty principles can be used to formulate access control strategies that reflect the dynamic nature of heterogeneous workflow systems. History-based Separation of Duties relies on the workflow history of a workflow object to determine the access permissions of a particular user to that workflow object. The required workflow history data must be stored in an easily accessible manner. Although this can be achieved through a centralized approach, it is difficult to achieve in a heterogeneous workflow environment where many unrelated workflow systems are interacting across various computer platforms. The model proposed by this dissertation suggests that the workflow history data of a workflow object travels with it in the form of an electronic document, from one heterogeneous workflow environment to another, as a type of “workflow baggage”. In order for this workflow baggage to be easily accessible to all workflow systems in the heterogeneous workflow environment, it must be stored in a universal format, which is structured to allow it to be easily queried. The Extensible Markup Language (XML) is adopted as an appropriate format for representing workflow baggage. The proposed model hinges on the expression of Separation of Duty requirements in a way that is removed from the application programs. A policy-driven approach is thus adopted. The implementation of the model involves the utilization of four steps: policy expression, baggage evaluation, document processing and baggage collection. The policy expression step is responsible for developing the Separation of Duty constraints to be enforced within the workflow system. During the baggage evaluation step the baggage of the workflow object is evaluated according to the constraints of the Separation of Duty policy. Only users who do not violate any of the Separation of Duty constraints are allowed to process the workflow object. After the workflow object has been processed the information regarding the processing is recorded in the baggage collection step. The proposed model enables heterogeneous workflow systems to share access control information in a flexible and portable way.

published_or_final_version / Business Administration / Master / Master of Business Administration

Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited / While the Internet and related advances in communications technology provide significant opportunity for the federal government to vastly improve the delivery of information and services, success ultimately depends on government managers effectively redesigning industrial age processes for the information age. This thesis is intended as a guide for government managers interested in redesigning processes for the information age. Using a case study of a Department of Defense process for transferring conventional ammunition among the military services (cross-leveling), we demonstrate improved intragovernmental efficiency and effectiveness by employing best practices in business process redesign. After providing an overview of the existing cross-leveling process, each stage of Business Process Redesign is discussed and applied to the crossleveling case. Activity Based Costing and Knowledge Value Added are used in evaluating the existing process and for providing a measure of process improvement. Using a three-tier architecture, a prototype application was constructed to help visualize the redesigned process and demonstrate the underlying technology. The concepts and processes used in the crossleveling case study can be easily applied to other government processes. / Lieutenant Commander, United States Coast Guard / Lieutenant Junior Grade, United States Coast Guard