Business process improvements and innovations in support service processes and the effective measurement of their impact on the performance of manufacturing firms in South Africa

• Main Author: Husvu, Munyaradzi
• Format: Others
• Language: en
• Published: 2017
• Subjects: Workflow > Management; Process control > Data processing > Management; Organizational effectiveness; Technological innovations > Management; Management information systems
• Online Access: Husvu, Munyaradzi (2017) Business process improvements and innovations in support service processes and the effective measurement of their impact on the performance of manufacturing firms in South Africa, University of the Witwatersrand, <http://hdl.handle.net/10539/23452>; http://hdl.handle.net/10539/23452

A research report submitted to the Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment, University of the Witwatersrand, in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Masters in Engineering, 2017 === Manufacturing companies have challenges implementing business process improvements and innovations (BPI) on support service processes effectively and find it difficult to measure the impact of such interventions on the overall performance of the organisation. Measurement of the impact of BPIs on overall performance of manufacturing companies is problematic due to the inadequacy of BPI metrics for support services. Furthermore, there are no universally accepted frameworks available for the measurement of the impact of improvements on support service processes on the performance of manufacturing companies. While there are frameworks available for performance measurement in general, they are not specific to measurement of the impact of BPIs in manufacturing support service processes. An initial exploratory study, based on an online survey of 50 companies that would typically conduct BPI or where known to the researcher to have conducted BPIs recently, was conducted to explore the nature of BPIs in manufacturing support service processes in South Africa. A second longer online survey was then conducted with 1000 respondents in manufacturing companies selected through expert sampling to further explore the nature and impact of BPIs in manufacturing support service processes considering selection of support service processes, the types and number of support service processes as well as BPI traditions and methodologies in use within manufacturing companies. In addition, four companies were selected for in-depth case studies in which ten projects were analysed by applying within case and cross case analysis The results of the surveys, the case studies and a revisit to the case companies were used to refine successive iterations of a theoretical framework initially developed from the literature. The framework provides a set of guidelines and actions for manufacturing companies to effectively conduct BPIs on manufacturing support service processes a basis from which the impact of improvements in manufacturing support service processes on manufacturing companies can be measured by providing the measurement areas to consider and a set of high level measures to use as high level indicators. Finally, the framework was checked for completeness using recommended criteria derived from the literature and was found to be complete and suitable as it met all the criteria for good measurement systems defined in the literature sources used in this study. === MT 2017