BUS298: TQM and BPR as Change Tools in Service & Manufacturing Sectors

This essay critically evaluates the usefulness of Total Quality Management (TQM) and Business Process Reengineering (BPR) as change tools for both manufacturing and service companies. It begins by defining and outlining how each change tool operates, highlighting the eight primary elements of TQM and the five key factors for successful BPR implementation. The essay then contrasts the characteristics of manufacturing and service companies, noting similarities in forecasting and process management but emphasizing differences in tangibility, inventory, labor intensity, and location constraints. It analyzes the application of TQM in manufacturing, pointing out its benefits in improving internal processes and customer service, while also acknowledging its high time cost. In the service industry, TQM is seen as enhancing competitiveness and customer satisfaction. The essay also discusses how BPR assists manufacturing companies in increasing innovation and process automation, but notes potential pitfalls like the lack of immediate competitive advantage. Finally, it concludes that while both tools can be valuable, BPR is particularly well-suited for the manufacturing industry due to its focus on process automation and efficiency.

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Organizational change is the procedure of changing the strategies, technologies, culture,
processes, structure and regulations of the organization to reorganize the operation of the
companies so that a positive shift of environment can be brought about in the organization. Total
Quality Management or TQM change tools are defined as the management approach to the long-
term success through customer satisfaction. This type of change tool is effective for the change
in the service industry. On the other hand, Business process reengineering or BPR tool purely
focusses on the perfect analysis and design of the business processes and workflows in the
organization. This essay explores the contention that both Total Quality Management or TQM
change tools and Business process reengineering are useful for the service industries, but only
Business process reengineering is a useful change tool for manufacturing industries.
This essay will be first discussing two important change tools Total Quality Management
and Business process reengineering along with their operations. Secondly it will discuss the
similarities and differences between the manufacturing and service companies with example and
finally analyses the effective application of these two change tools on these two types of
industries. This essay will give scope to understand the efficiency of these two change tools in
the different sectors of business. However, this essay will not cover the efficacy of these tools in
the retail industries or IT industries of the world.
Total Quality Management tools guarantees success of the organizations when all the
members of the organizations take part in improving the products, process and services as well as
the culture of the organization so that their service to the customers becomes more improved.
There are eight primary elements of TQM which includes the customer focuses, total employee
involvement, process centralism, integrated system, strategic as well as systematic approach,
factual decision making and communications (Murmura et al. 2018). It is a management system

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especially applicable for the organizations which depend only upon the customers satisfaction.
Therefore, this involves all the employees of the organization for this improvement. This uses
data, strategies, along with the effective communication among the other stakeholders so that it
can integrate quality discipline in the organizational culture as well as its activities. This is the
reason why the organizations use this tool for its systematic and participative approach that
creates scope for planning ad implementing a constant organizational improvement process
(Olivier, Borros and Reyes 2014). TQM also focusses on the exceeding the customer’s
expectations, building commitments, identifying problems and promoting an open decision-
making process among the employees of the organization.
Business process reengineering or BPR tool analyses and designs the business processes.
This involves radical redesigning of the core business process for achieving dramatic
improvement in the quality, productivity and cycle times of the firms. Under this technique, the
companies being changes from the root situation as they stat from scratch and rethink the
existing processes for delivering more value to their customers. This tool helps the companies to
restructure their organization by focusing on their ground up design of the business processes.
This business process reengineering technologies emphasize a holistic focus on the business
objectives as well as how the processes are related to them. This tool encourages a full-scale
recreation of the processes rather than iterative optimization of the sub-processes. There are five
factors that help the companies to apply Business process reengineering process and gain
success. These include team composition, corporate needs analysis, sufficient information
technology infrastructure, efficient change management as well as continuous improvement
(Park, Park and Yoo 2018). This particular toll has six sequential stages which makes it

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systematic. These stages include, envision new processes, change of initiative, process diagnosis
and redesign, renovation finally process monitoring.
Manufacturing companies like different car manufacturing and garments manufacturing
companies in the world use components, raw materials or parts to produce finished goods. These
ready products can be then directly sold toe the consumers or to other companies who will make
these products to make different products. In most of the manufacturing companies in this
business context, the production includes robots, computers, machines, clothes and other things.
Manufacturing companies often use assembly line (Balan 2017). It is the process where the
products are put together in the order from first work station to the second. This process is used
to move the product down the assembly line and finished goods are assembled with less time and
less manual labor.
On the contrary the service industries mainly generate income through providing services
instead of selling physical products like the manufacturing companies. The service industry
provides the customers benefits by performing their works in an expert manner by the teams or
individual manner. The offerings of the service business provide intangible products like
banking, accounting, consulting, cleaning, education, treatment, insurance and transportations
services. There are six aspects in which both manufacturing and service industries work
similarly. Both these industries operate in a similar way in the forecasting and capacity planning
to march the supply and demand. The process management and managing variations are also
similar for both these industries. Both service as well as manufacturing industries monitor and
control costs so that they can provide competitive prices to customers but still turn profit. There
are similarities in the supply and management for both industries. The local planning, inventory
management and scheduling factors are similar for both the industries.

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There are five major differences in manufacturing and service industries. First it is associated
with the tangibility of the outputs. The products in service industry is intangible but
manufacturing companies produce physical good. Secondly, the service firms do not hold
inventory like manufacturing companies. They create a service when the clients need but the
manufactures stock their products to supply according to the market demands. Thirdly, the
service industries do not reduce their services unless the customers require (Mehmann and
Teuteberg 2016). However, they design the contents and develop the scopes in advance so that
the service can be provided immediately after demand. Fourthly, differences are also present in
the labor requirements. The service industry is intensely labor intensive which cannot be
automated easily like the manufacturing industry. Service firms produce service designed to the
needs of the customers and deliver them shortly after the demand. On the contrary, the
manufacturing firms can produce goods without customer order or forecasts of the customer
demand. Finally, the service industry is not location bound as creating and delivering of the
services can take place anywhere but manufacturing firms must have a perfect physical location
for production as well as their stock holding operations.
Application of Total Quality Management to manufacturing industries has various facets.
This participle tool is used by the manufacturing companies to improve their internal processes
so that they can enhance their customer service, cut operational costs and compete with world
class manufacturing companies. As the finished goods of the manufacturing companies are the
main process of attracting customers and enhance profit level, therefore, total quality
management tool is used to bring changes in the departments. According to Madanhire and
Mbohwa (2016), total quality management tool, needs a comprehensive approach which must be
recognized and then applied if the positive consequences are to be gained. For the manufacturing

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industry, the current business situation has become more competitive where the mangers of the
care manufacturing companies like Ford, BMW and the manufacturing brands like H&M, Zara,
Louis Vuitton, Nike, Gucci and Adidas are compelled to plan strategically so that they can hold
the market share and increase them effectively. According to Olivier, Borros and Reyes (2014)
there are some disadvantages of using TQM in the manufacturing industry which includes its
high cost of time. In this business condition full of uncertainty, the manufacturing companies
who require to apply TQM in their organizations, will get the results after a long period of time.
Hence it is considered to be a log-term investment.
In the service industry, the companies are more customer demand oriented and this is the
base of their competition. The more customers are satisfied, the more the companies will earn
profit. In such a context, total quality management helps these industries to improve
competitiveness flexibility and effectiveness. According to Park, Park and Yoo (2018) who have
mainly focused on the airlines business, stated that this tool emphasizes a set of practices which
effectively help the companies to continue improvements, meet customer needs, reduce reworks
and long-range thinking process, enhanced, teamwork process and employee attachment, process
redesigning, benchmarking and constant measuring of results and closer connection with the
suppliers. However, as pointed out by Lau et al. (2016), the labors of the service industry think
that they are at risk under the TQM program hence do not support change.
The manufacturing industries as mentioned before, operate in a highly competitive
market. Therefore, Business process reengineering therefore helps the companies to fight
increasing competition and reach the market faster. To Balan (2017), Business process
reengineering has definite process which many focusses on the department of production,
customer orders, material management, distribution and logistics, financial management and

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finally human resource management. All these processes when work under BPR, help the
companies to meet specific objectives in one hand and build as well as maintain a good
relationship with the suppliers and customers (Esbenshade et al. 2016). In addition to this, the
manufacturing industry need to supply their products as early as possible to the customers
therefore, they need to stock goods or increase production which is often not possible for the
human labors. Business process reengineering helps the manufacturing companies to process
automation in the production which can never be applicable to the service industries. To Asika
and Awolusi (2013), BPR thus helping the companies to increase their innovation process to
build a new information system and thus making the process better. However, to Soni and Kodali
(2017) BPR has some common pitfalls such as it does not give the companies the scope to gain
immediate competitive advantage. Secondly implementing this process is also not simple and it
is also not appraising for all the manufacturing companies.
BPR process in the service industries is effective as this creates value by the capabilities
for competitiveness. The managers of healthcare, airlines and other service industries are
preferring this particular tool as this can discover the best and most effective processes for
performing work and optimize productivity (Jung and Lee 2016). The fundamental rethinking as
well as radical redesign of the business process add value to the customer which is the main aim
of the service industries. According to Kumar and Rahman (2014), BPR has been known as a
type of organizational change which is categorized by strategic transformation of the interrelated
organizational subsystems that produces various levels of impacts. This particular organizational
change tool recognizes that the BRP is not monolithic notion but continuum of methods to
process change in the service industry. However, Safari (2016) has pointed out that many of the
service organizations are not able to invest time as well as resources for implementing this

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radical and clean state approach. These companies are not able to arrange for developed
information technology required by significant process improvement. For attaining the best result
of this tool, the companies must arrange for training as the people performing each day will need
perfect knowledge abiu this process. finally, Most of the BPR tools do not seem to be
considering the sudden change of customer needs.
Therefore, it can be concluded that the positive shift of environment can be brought about
in the organization through organizational changes. In order to apply changes effectively, the
companies need to apply Total Quality Management and Business process reengineering tools.
There are huge differences in the manufacturing and service industries starting from the
operations, customer base and output. This is the reason why different companies need to apply
different tools. However, both Total Quality Management or TQM change tools and Business
process reengineering are useful for the service industries, but only Business process
reengineering is a useful change tool for manufacturing industries as this apply the core business
process of this type of industry and support less to the service industry.

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