Improving Business Processes: The RePro Technique

Business Process Engineering
Improving Business Processes: Does anybody have an Idea? Rob J. B. Vanwersch, Irene
Vanderfeesten, Eric Rietzschel, Hajo A. Reijers
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Introduction
This paper will review Business Process Management proceedings of the 13th
International Conference which was conducted in the year 2015 in Innsbruck, specifically on the
article of Improving Business Processes. The article talks more about the techniques of
redesigning business processes and ensuring an improvement in the processes. It brings about a
new technique of ensuring that there is an improvement of business process known as Rethinking
of Processes. In this case, the content of this article, the research method which was used and its
findings will be discussed. The relevance of this article to business process management will also
be explained. Related articles will be used in order to develop a substantial and significant
review essay.
Vanwersch et al, (2015, p. 4) suggest that the process of redesigning business processes is
very significant because it is through this process that the business weaknesses are identified,
costs of the business processes are reduced and the customer satisfaction is improved. In the
process of redesigning, the business processes are first described and analyzed where the
weaknesses are identified and then the necessary improvements are made (Grant, 2016). In most
cases, brainstorming, which is a traditional technique of business redesigning, has been used by
many businesses. However, Sanford, (2017) argue that this brainstorming technique is not very
convenient nor very effective. This is because it does not allow the practitioners to identify
several possible alternatives that can be used to redesign the business processes; it is just fixed to
only one technique of business process redesign.
The Traditional Brainstorming technique leads the practitioners to biases and prevents
them from identifying and considering other possible choices or alternatives of redesigning
(McCabe, 2014). The Rethinking of Processes is an alternative technique which is more efficient
than the traditional brainstorming technique. The Rethinking of Processes is mostly shortened
and termed as RePro. It allows for practitioners in businesses to choose from a wide range of
alternatives for redesigning their business processes, which is an opposing aspect in the
Traditional Brainstorming technique. (Ferretti and Schiavone, 2016). In addition, through RePro,
practitioners are relieved of the costs, time and procedures of hiring experts or consultants to
help them in finding and identifying better, attractive and applicable redesigns of the business
process. Vanwersch et al, (2015, p. 4) have only named and highlighted two business process
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redesign techniques. However, Kettinger, Teng, and Guha, (2013, p. 56) suggest that there are
more than ten techniques which can be practiced in various areas like in the process of software
development, in manufacturing, in the planning of businesses as well as in healthcare.
The RePro technique was developed as an alternative to the Traditional Brainstorming
technique. It makes use of principles which are seen as solutions which have been put into
application earlier and found to be applicable in other settings. All the RePro principles are 46 in
number and are classified into 9 categories which are designed in favor of the aspects or
conditions of the business process which can be subjected to improvement (Vanwersch et al,
2015, p. 8). Apart from the principles, the RePro technique makes use of a process improvement
procedure which allows for systematic analysis of the principles in order to identify the best
solution which fits into a particular problem. This procedure starts by introducing and explaining
the procedure, followed by the generation of ideas, idea sharing, discussion of the limitations of
the ideas and finally assigning ranks to the generated ideas.
The evidence of the efficiency of RePro has been brought up through a controlled
experiment research design which compares and evaluates its performance with the Traditional
Brainstorming technique. The experiment used 89 students who were Industrial Engineering
graduates. However, these experiment participants had no experience in the generation of
process redesigns; they were not experts and therefore, they could have not provided the relevant
and useful findings and conclusions (Vanwersch et al, 2015, p. 15). They were however
subjected to a short training on process modeling in order to equip them with relevant knowledge
and skills which would help them in the proceedings of the experiment.
The task of the experiment involved generating improvement ideas on the process of
performing a surgery on patients with eye cataracts. Cataracts of the eye are caused by the
blocking or clouding of the eye lens which results to decrease in the ability of vision (Vanwersch
et al, 2015, p. 12). The authors of this article worked with the selected participants to ensure
efficiency of the experiment where they laid out the objectives of the redesign, the limitations of
the redesigns and also considered the problems that were identified by patients as well as the
employees (Vanwersch et al, 2015, p. 11). A pre-test, as well as a pilot study, were carried out
before the real experiment in order to evaluate the understandability of the description by the
participants and also to estimate the time required to complete the entire experiment. Some
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