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ACCA Strategic Professional · Strategic Business Leader · Enabling success: performance excellence

Dunmore Plastics adopts kaizen. Operators are encouraged to suggest many small changes to their own work cells, and each change is tested and standardised if it works. Which statement best describes how this approach differs from business process re-engineering (BPR)?

Kaizen pursues continuous, small, incremental improvements involving all staff, with successful changes standardised, while BPR seeks radical, fundamental redesign of whole processes, usually driven from the top. The options that swap these characteristics are wrong.

  1. AKaizen seeks radical, one-off redesign of processes from a clean sheet, whereas BPR relies on small steps
  2. BKaizen depends on senior consultants, whereas BPR is driven by front-line staff
  3. CKaizen seeks ongoing incremental improvement involving all staff, whereas BPR seeks radical redesign of end-to-end processesCorrect
  4. DKaizen ignores standardisation, whereas BPR requires it

Explanation

Kaizen is continuous, incremental and involves everyone, with improvements standardised. BPR is a radical, fundamental redesign of processes, usually top-down. The first option reverses the two approaches.

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