A Case of Reengineering Gone Bad and the Suggested
Changes to Make it Successful
Hospitals are currently operating under major change with recent legislation. These major changes are creating a need for reengineering. Successful reengineering is determined by a processes improvement that results in better quality, speed, use of resources, and customer satisfaction. The reengineering will require defining how goals can best be met with new processes, rather than how old processes worked in the past (Kinsel & Miller, 1998). Many times a consultant is used in the reengineering process. Advising the client of all aspects of the process is vital to ensure a successful conclusion when you are the consultant.
In the process of reengineering for an organization, there are seven rules to be followed for a productive implementation to occur. These seven principles are according to Michael Hammer, the pioneer of reengineering (Chase, Aquilano & Jacobs, 2006). My current employer recently went through a reengineering process in my department that has not been successful thus far. In this reengineering, the case cart room and responsibilities was removed from the Sterile Processing department and assigned to the Material Management department. If during this process, all seven steps were followed, then the outcome might have been better. The first rule of organizing around outcomes, not tasks, was not followed in my opinion. The outcome of this change resulted in slower response time and more handoffs because the material management tech would be in a different area of the hospital when the operating room nurse called for something. This ended up creating a lag time from call to delivery of the item, or a handoff to the sterile processing tech to retrieve the item needed. Another rule not followed in my opinion is the second rule, have those who use the output