Managing Quality Initiatives in Services: JIT Delivers but BPR Fails

This paper reports on initiatives whereby JIT and BPR approaches are being used with technology to improve business processes in a large public sector organisation. Initially the study pursues the benefits of reducing waste in service processes and transferring the revised processes to an electronic base. Significant gains in productivity and customer satisfaction are demonstrated. Further evaluation after 18 months indicates that benefits still exist but that they change over time. Finally, the study explores whether similar application of BPR thinking enables gains to be achieved across the wider organisation and finds that comparable benefits are not realised. Major impediments include conflict between organisational structures and strategy, and lack of direct business imperatives with respect to the changes.