Process reengineering is redesigning or reinventing how we perform our daily work, and it is a concept that is applicable to all industries regardless of size, type, and location.

While selected elements of process reengineering are well documented in the late 1800s and early 1900s, process reengineering as a body of knowledge or as an improvement initiative, takes the best of the historical management and improvement principles and combines them with more recent philosophies and principles, which make all people in an organization function as process owners and reinvent processes. It is this combination of the old and the new as well as the emphasis on dramatic, rapid reinvention that makes process reengineering an exciting concept. The differences between continuous process improvement and process reengineering are outlined in Figure 1.

The first question in process reengineering is: "Why are we doing this at all?" Answering...