Reengineering of ITT Sheraton

Abstract

Business reengineering is an approach that organizations use to redesign their work processes to achieve dramatic improvements in productivity and performance. Hammer (1990, 1993) and Davenport (1990, 1993) are two leading scholars who have given shape to business engineering as a field of study by synthesizing their observations of a number of business reengineering projects. Since business reengineering as a field has evolved by learning from practical business reengineering projects, the authors undertook a study of ITT Sheraton's business reengineering project to assess how business reengineering projects fit the conceptual and methodological ideas presented in Hammer's (1993) and in Davenport's (1993) writings. The goal of this case study was to learn how organizations begin reengineering projects, how reengineering projects produce dramatic improvements, whether information technology is an integral or necessary component of business reengineering, and how business reengineering projects differ from other productivity and efficiency initiatives such as Total Quality Management (TQM) and Continuous Process Improvement (CPI). This paper describes the reengineering process at ITT Sheraton and makes observations that provide an understanding of how reengineering projects are executed and how business reengineering relates and complements CPI and TQM. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. and Cornwallis Emmanuel Ltd.