Development and assessment of a methodology for the business process improvement

There appears to be an ever insatiable demand from markets for organisations toimprove their products and services. In response, the concept of Business ProcessImprovement (BPI) has been developed in recent years as a useful aid. Unfortunately,there is no robust methodology that practitioners can use to apply this concept.Therefore, the intention of this research is to provide a generic and practicalmethodology to support the implementation of business process improvement withinorganisations.The research described in this thesis has set out to form a BPI methodology through astructured research programme. A pilot methodology was formed on the basis ofexisting contributions in the literature. This was initially refined through discussion withexperts in the field, and a primary field trial. After refinement, the methodology wasmore thoroughly tested through case studies at three companies. The fully tested andrefined methodology is presented as a workbook in the appendix of this thesis.The outcome of this research is a structured step by step methodology which is an aid toBPI. This methodology takes the practitioner through such steps as; understandingbusiness needs, understanding the process, redesigning the process, implementing thenew process, and reviewing the new process. The outcome of executing themethodology is a documented business process.The work described in this thesis has made a significant contribution to the knowledgeon methodologies for BPI. It has also demonstrated that such methodologies can beformed and tested rigorously in an industrial context.