A STRATEGY FOR EVALUATING ALTERNATIVE INFORMATION-SYSTEM DESIGNS FOR BUSINESS PROCESS REENGINEERING

Many US companies are looking to business processing reenginsering (BP R) - a process of redesign that is dramatic, company-wide, and often i nformation technology (IT) oriented - in order to compete in the globa l marketplace. Given the scope and importance of BPR work, it is criti cal that there should be some objective measures applied to determinin g which (If any) possible changes should be made in a business's proce sses. Computer simulation technology is well suited to this design ass essment role. Use of simulation, however, entails varieties of data co llection that go beyond the information generally gathered in a BPR an alysis. Once in use, simulation models encourage a culture of measurem ent that supports continuous process improvement (CPI). While we do no t prescribe a particular set of tools that should be used for simulati on-supported BPR, we recommend explicit attention to and management of the modelling tasks: (a) data collection and organization, (b) simula tion of component designs, and (c) integration of component simulation results.