Abstract

Business process management (BPM) helps align organizational strategies and business processes. To improve operational efficiency, BPM researchers propose the Plan, Do, Check, Act (PDCA) life cycle as a framework for businesses to continuously improve their process management. However, most of past studies regarding the applications of BPM are limited to the primary process while studies on the utilization of BPM in support processes remain rare. The express industry is labor-intensive. However, the lengthy hiring processes of express companies prevent potential candidates from accepting job offers and thus these companies lose their competitiveness. Moreover, the hiring process is previously considered a backend support process, relevant discussions are also limited. This research explores whether and how the PDCA life cycle can be applied to the support process of the express industry. We conduct a case study on the Taiwan subsidiary of a multinational express company. By utilizing the cycle to its hiring process, the case company redefines the responsibilities of process owners and redesigns the process. The results indicate that the application of PDCA life cycle significantly improves the company’s operations. Specifically, the recruitment process time is improved by 85.3%, and the rates of damaged reports and rejected offers due to lengthy processes are both improved by 100%. The contribution of this research is threefold. It contributes to the body of knowledge for BPM by applying the PDCA life cycle in Taiwan, an application which answers the call for validation for generalization purposes. It also fills the gap in the BPM literature by focusing on the support process instead. Finally, it provides guidance to practitioners that intend to conduct BPM projects for performance improvement.  

Keywords

business process management (BPM)PDCA life cycleexpress industry