Development of business process reengineering methodology for a commercial airline.

Over the past few years, much attention has been given to the concept of Business
Process Reengineering (BPR) and its implementation by various companies as a key
strategy to regain or improve their competitive edge in the marketplace. BPR is a new
business concept for organizational review that involves a fundamental rethinking and
systematic redesign of core business processes supported by advance information
technology to achieve sustainable step improvements in measures of performance .

The aim of this research was to develop a BPR methodology for a commercial airline
that could be used for the various levels and types of operation within the airline
business today. The increasing complexity and variety of operations and processes
within the airline industry and at the same time the increased interest in BPR as a way
to change and improvement to meet current and future challenges are all facts that
emphasis the need to tailor a generic BPR methodology to suit the particular
requirements of a commercial airline.

To achieve the research aim, an extensive review of literature was undertaken to
understand the basics and roots of the BPR concept and to establish the need for a
BPR methodology for airline companies. The research method also involved a review
of current BPR practice and comparison of some famous BPR methodologies. This
review and comparison had contributed to develop the basis for the proposed BPR
methodology. A comprehensive review and comparative analysis of both American
Airlines and Saudi Airlines BPR methodologies was undertaken to stress on their
strengths and to overcome their shortcomings which used later to form the basis for
the proposed BPR methodology for a commercial airline. In addition to the findings of
each stage of this research, another factor was contributed to the development of the
proposed methodology is the extensive experience gained by the author in managing
and implementing the BPR projects in Saudi Airlines.

The proposed BPR methodology represents a business process management model
that ensures for the airline the achievement of process awareness, process ownership
and process alignment with the airline vision and strategies. It helps to focus the airline
effort on core business processes that add value to the end customer of the airline and
maintain the required incremental improvement during the continuous improvement
phase which is well defined and linked to the entire BPR effort .

In addition, the proposed methodology was developed within the airline industry. This
involves the application of the roots of this methodology in both American Airlines and
Saudia in major BPR projects. Therefore, the proposed BPR methodology has the
characteristic of being evolved and tested within airline industry which increase the
probability of successful implementation of this methodology for any commercial
airline. Indeed, this research has contributed a lot to the development and success of
the BPR program within Saudi Arabian Airlines and produced many tangible benefits.
Recommendations for further work with respect to some key tools and techniques that
needed to support and facilitate the implementation of the proposed BPR methodology
are provided .