Emerging Trends in

Engineering and Technology

Continuous Improvement through BPR in

Software Development and Usage
A CASE STUDY

N.Vivekananthamoorthy
Department of Information
Technology
KCG College of Technology
nvivekanand@gmail.com
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Introduction

■ Business Process Reengineering means not only change -- but

dramatic change. What constitutes dramatic change is the
overhaul of organizational structures, management systems,
employee responsibilities and the use of information
technology.
✦ It was introduced by Dr.Michael Hammer in 1990s
✦ This paper presents the re-engineering work done at BHEL(Trichy) using BPR
strategy in the software development and maintenance process as a CASE
STUDY. It involves migration from COBOL to ORACLE based Client Server
system
✦ Successful BPR can result in enormous reductions in cost or cycle time. It can
also potentially create substantial improvements in quality, customer service, or
other business objectives

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What is BPR?

■ "Business Reengineering is the fundamental

rethinking and radical redesign of business
processes to achieve dramatic improvements
in critical, contemporary measures of
performance, such as cost, quality, service,
and speed."
■ -- Dr. Michael Hammer

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FORD EXAMPLE

■ Reengineering – a new management buzzword.

■ The basic message is
■ Many work flows, job designs, control mechanisms, and
organizational structures are either superfluous or
obsolete and should be completely redesigned.
■ " We should reengineer our [organizations]; use the
power of modern information processing technology to
radically redesign our ... processes in order achieve
dramatic improvements in their performance.... We
cannot achieve breakthroughs in performance merely
by cutting fat or automating existing processes. Rather
we must challenge the old assumptions and shed old
rules.“ --- Michael Hammer
■ Hammer illustrates reengineering with the revolution
that took place in Ford’s system of accounts payable. In
the early 1980’s, Ford’s auditors carefully studied
accounts payable activities and concluded that, by
consolidating, by rationalizing processes, and by
installing new computer systems, staff could be cut Slide 4
twenty percent -- from 500 employees to 400.
An Institutionally Secure Integrated Data Environment
Common Steps in BPR

■ Project Phases Required For Successful BPR:

■ Phase 1: Begin Organizational Change
■ Phase 2: Build the Reengineering Organization
■ Phase 3: Identify BPR Opportunities
■ Phase 4: Understand the Existing Process
■ Phase 5: Reengineer the Process
■ Phase 6: Blueprint the New Business System
■ Phase 7: Perform the Transformation

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Phase –I Begin Organizational Change

■ Assess the current state of the organization

■ - Explain the need for change(Consolidate the
problems which can be converted into
opportunities-Creates potential for trying new
technologies)
■ - Illustrate the desired state
■ - Create a communications campaign for
change

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Phase -2 Build the Re-engineering
Organization

■ Activities
■ Establish a BPR organizational structure
■ Establish the roles for performing BPR
■ Choose the personnel who will reengineer

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Phase3 –Identify BPR Opportunities

■ Activities
■
-Identify the core/high-level processes
■ - Recognize potential change enablers
■ - Gather performance metrics within industry
■ - Gather performance metrics outside industry
■ - Select processes that should be reengineered
■ - Prioritize selected processes
■ - Evaluate pre-existing business strategies
■ - Consult with customers for their desires --- Quality,Delivery
■ - Determine customer's actual needs ---- Sequential Delivery
■ - Formulate new process performance objectives
■ - Establish key process characteristics

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Phase4 – Understand the existing process

■ Activities
■ Understand why the current steps are performed
■ - Model the current process
■ - Understand how technology is currently used – COBOL – Unix
based system
■ - Understand how information is currently used – batch system
– non interactive – text based terminals(NO GUI)
■ - Understand the current organizational structure(slow to
react to customer needs)
■ - Compare current process with the new objectives – cycle
time reduction – fast in reacting to customer needs –
compettetive in market

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Phase5 – Re-engineer the process

■ Activities
■ - Ensure the diversity of the reengineering team – Top
management,User Group,Developers Group)
■ - Question current operating assumptions
■ - Brainstorm using change levers – Selecting the correct
technology within Budget
■ - Brainstorm using BPR principles
■ - Evaluate the impact of new technologies – Competetive
Advantage,Cycle time reduction,Work life enrichment
■ - Consider the perspectives of stakeholders – Faith in the
information system
■ - Use customer value as the focal point – Quality and Delivery

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BPR Principles

■  Several jobs are combined into one;

■ Workers make decisions;
■ The steps in a process are performed in a natural order;
■ Processes have multiple versions;
■ Work is performed where it makes the most
sense(Capture data where it originates – Eg BOM from
Design Dept);
■ Checks and controls are reduced;
■ Reconciliation is minimized;
■ A case manager provides a single point of contact;
■ Hybrid centralized/decentralized operations are
prevalent.
■  -- Dr. Michael Hammer

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Phase 7 Perform the Transformation

■ Activities
■
-Develop a migration strategy – A project plan
■ - Create a migration action plan – PERT network with
important milestones
■ - Develop metrics for measuring performance during
implementation
■ - Involve the impacted staff – Consult Users who are going to
use the system
■ - Implement in an iterative fashion - Building proto types
■ - Establish the new organizational structures
■ - Assess current skills and capabilities of workforce
■ - Map new tasks and skill requirements to staff
■ - Re-allocate workforce
■ - Develop a training curriculum

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Phase 6 Blueprint the new Business
System

■ Activities
■ - Define the new flow of work
■ - Model the new process steps
■ - Model the new information requirements
■ - Document the new organizational structure
■ - Describe the new technology specifications
■ - Record the new personnel management
systems
■ - Describe the new values and culture required

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CASE STUDY
Ancilliary Development Computer System –
BHEL(Trichy)

■ Hardware set up
■ First decentralized computer system (PDP11) established in 1986
■ Unix based Multiprocessor system introduced in 1990 – HCL Magnum
■ Problems faced
■ Existence of information islands with fragmented systems
■ Cobol based systems was huge and difficult to maintain
■ User has access to lot of data but he is not getting the information he
wants.
■ Integration exists only in paper.
■ Usage of variety of software packages in a module
■ Accountability down the line is poor.
■ Currency of data is poor.
■ Difficult to get adhoc reports and to answer queries

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CASE STUDY
Ancilliary Development Computer System –
BHEL(Trichy)

■ Hardware set up
■ Client server Technology with RDBMS introduced in
1997 with HP 9000 unix server
■ The Solution
■ Try Business process reengineering
■ Exploit new software capabilities
■ Upgrade the computer system to Client Server
Technology with RDBMS Oracle
■ Improve data integration
■ Empower working staff

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CASE STUDY
Ancilliary Development Computer System –
BHEL(Trichy)

■ BPR Objectives
■ Cost Reduction ( Mainly operating cost can be
drastically cut by reducing cycle time of processes and
by eliminating unwanted steps)
■ Time and space shrinkage (Cutting processing time
from weeks to days and eliminating unwanted
intermediate outputs)
■ Quality enhancement(By eliminating errors,exercizing
various controls which becomes amenable due to BPR)
■ Work Life enrichment(By eliminating monotonous steps
in jobs by introducing creativity and by introducing new
things to learn)
■ Profit improvement

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CASE STUDY
Ancilliary Development Computer System –
BHEL(Trichy)

■ Steps in BPR
■ Develop Business Vision and Process
objectives
■ Identify processes to be reengineered
■ Understand and measure existing process

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CASE STUDY
Ancilliary Development Computer System –
BHEL(Trichy)

■ Strategy
■ Study the existing system(Around 500 COBOL programs
and Job Modules with no systematic documentation)
■ Evolve the sytem design from first principles(Then only
we can expect dramatic results).
■ Development of Data Model(ER Diagram) after Business
Data Analysis(Mapping from Flat file System to
Relational Data Model).
■ Identification of entities,attributes and relationships
and Integrity Constraints.
■ Batch to online conversion(COBOL to ORACLE)
■ Eliminate many steps in the existing system which are
unnecessary(Merging tables dealing with same entity
etc)

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CASE STUDY
Ancilliary Development Computer System –
BHEL(Trichy)

■ Development of Interactive
forms
■ Study For data capture at source and populating and
changing the database content(Using front end tool –
Developer 2000 – Many cobol programs map into a
single form- The program logic is converted as triggers
and PL/SQL Procedures)
■ Incorporation of Business Rules
■ Eg Income tax and recovery calculation in
Bills(Database triggers and PL/SQL procedures)

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CASE STUDY
Ancilliary Development Computer System –
BHEL(Trichy)

■ Development of Interactive forms

■ TRIG Name DCDATE
■ TRIG TRIG Name KEY-NEXT-ITEM
■ TRIG declare
■ TRIG myrcd varchar2(2);
■ TRIG mm varchar2(2);
■ TRIG yy varchar2(2);
■ TRIG dd varchar2(2);
■ TRIG yymmdd varchar2(6);
■ TRIG begin
■ TRIG yymmdd := to_char(:blk2.dcdate,'yymmdd');
■ TRIG mm := substr(yymmdd,3,2);
■ TRIG yy := substr(yymmdd,1,2);
■ TRIG dd := substr(yymmdd,5,2);
■ TRIG if mm in ( '01','02','03') then
■ TRIG myrcd :=to_char( to_number(substr(yy,2,1))-1)||substr(yy,2,1);
■ TRIG else
■ TRIG begin
■ TRIG if yy = '99' then
■ TRIG myrcd := '90';
■ TRIG end if;
■ TRIG end;
■ TRIG myrcd := substr(yy,2,1)||to_char(to_number(substr(yy,2,1))+1);
■ TRIG end if;
■ TRIG :blk2.dcyrcd := myrcd;
■ TRIG NEXT_ITEM;
■ TRIG end;
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CASE STUDY
CASE STUDY
Ancilliary Development Computer System –
Ancilliary Development Computer System – BHEL(Trichy)
BHEL(Trichy)

■ Trial Assembly

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CASE STUDY
Ancilliary Development Computer System –
BHEL(Trichy)

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 Ancilliary Development
Computer System –
BHEL(Trichy)

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CASE STUDY
Ancilliary Development Computer System –
BHEL(Trichy)

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CASE STUDY
Ancilliary Development Computer System –
BHEL(Trichy)

■ Development of Interactive
forms

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CASE STUDY
Ancilliary Development Computer System –
BHEL(Trichy)

■ Development of Interactive
forms

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 CASE STUDY
Ancilliary Development Computer System –
BHEL(Trichy)

■ SYSTEM SIMPLIFICATION AND

RE-ENGINEERING THROUGH ORACLE IMPLEMENTATION
■ RE-ENGINEERING
◆ Many computer process and intermediate steps eliminated while migrating from COBOL to ORACLE 
◆ Redundant data storage avoided 
◆ Business Rules rewritten 
RE­ENGINEERING EXAMPLES
✦ Faster Generation of other area indents due to automatic area code identification at DU absorption
✦ Rate Schedule eligibility check while loading a supplier
✦ On line DC posting, Bill Processing and DCN processing keeps always AD data current.
✦ Acceptance of the bill based on multiple rates
✦ Extra Rate acceptance based on original Vs extra rate schedule matrix
✦ Bill error is corrected if the same is due to DC error by simultaneous attack on error
✦ Terminal date shown in different reports are taken from single source

■ SYSTEM SIMPLIFICATION
✦ Monitoring of critical DUs simplified due to exception reports in different sorting order
✦ DCN incorporation system simplified due to online implementation of IOM system
✦ Integrated hold up with non match tonnage statement has helped to identify critical items by clearing
which maximum matching can be obtained.
✦ Many user friendly enquiries have been developed which provides integrated information.

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CASE STUDY
Ancilliary Development Computer System –
BHEL(Trichy)

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CASE STUDY
Ancilliary Development Computer System –
BHEL(Trichy)

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CASE STUDY
Ancilliary Development Computer System –
BHEL(Trichy)

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CASE STUDY
Ancilliary Development Computer System –
BHEL(Trichy)

■ Conclusion
■ The computer system successfully migrated from
COBOL to ORACLE using BPR strategy.
■ Information islands bridged(Eg DBLINK facilty and
distributed database approach)
■ Online System introduced due to which the information
has become current and the same is easily accessible by
all users.
■ People are empowered and life style changed with job
enrichment.
■ (Other examples of BPR are computerized Railway
reservation and Banking operations – say easy
passbook entry any time)
■ We can cope up with the shock due to technology
change.

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CASE STUDY
Ancilliary Development Computer System –
BHEL(Trichy)

■ References
■  Andrews, Dorine C. and Susan K. Stalick, Business Reengineering: the
Survival Guide, Yourdon Press, 1994.
■ Davenport, Thomas H., Process Innovation, Boston, MA: Harvard
Business School Press, 1993.
■ Hall, Gene and Jim Rosenthal and Judy Wade, How to Make
Reengineering Really Work, Harvard Business Review, November-
December 1993.
■ Hammer, Michael, Reengineering Work: Don’t Automate, Obliterate,
Harvard Business Review, July-August 1990.
■ Hammer, Michael and James Champy, Reengineering the Corporation,
NY: Harper Business, 1993.
■ Harvard Business School Report, Business Process Reengineering: IT-
Enabled Radical Change, June 1993
■ Petrozzo, Daniel P. and John C. Stepper, Successful Reengineering,
Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1994.

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