Business Process Reengineering as it Relates to the Accounts Payable System of the United States Postal Service

Author

Joseph E. Gribat, Fontbonne College

Year of Award

1995

Degree

Master of Business Administration (MBA)

College

College of Business & Professional Studies

Degree Program

Business Administration

Department

Business Administration

Keywords

technology, management, USPS, companies

Abstract

A set of principles from more than two centuries ago have changed the structure, management, and performance of American business throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. For two-hundred years, people have built their companies around Adam Smith’s brilliant discovery that industrial work should be broken into its simplest parts. In the post-industrial business age of modern day, new corporations will be built around idea of again combining those tasks into clear business processes. The techniques that will accomplish this is Business Process Reengineering (BPR). This narrative opens a provocative and controversial book: “Reengineering the Corporation: A Manifesto for Business Revolution” by Michael Hammer and James Champy. This thesis covers this hottest concept of modem business, Business Process Reengineering, and the causes that make this radical change process necessary. This thesis gives a definition of Business Process Reengineering, covers various philosophies about it, identifies the many different roles involved in these philosophies, touches on the magnitude of the task of Reengineering an atypical accounts payable department, and shows how work radically changes in an organization where Business Process Reengineering is being fulfilled. This theses shows how Business Process Reengineering can get complex when dealing with an organization as big as the United States Postal Service; specifically, the United States Postal Service Accounts Payable system.

Comments

Here are particulars about the physical attributes for this thesis. The thesis was prepared with Microsoft Word, Version 6.0, a product of Microsoft Corporation. Pages without graphics were printed on a Hewlett- Packard DeskJet Plus, a liquid ink printer. The color graphics were printed on a Hewlett Packard PaintJet XL300, also a liquid color ink printer.

Text Margin Justification

Long ago, (1977) in the age of impact printers, every printed letter received equal spacing. Letters, such as I’s, M’s, and spaces (‘ ‘), were all afforded the same width on the page. Then, the method of forcing lines of text to always end at the same right-hand column was to add two spaces between the words on the left side of the line until the last character of the line found the right-most column. Many times, this actually caused a distorted-looking page. This method actually reduced the professional look of a manuscript. This is why thesis writers were ultimately told not to use right-justification. It just didn’t help the manuscript.

In today’s modem printers, each letter gets its own distance, and for right-justification, all the words along the whole line are equally spaced to cause the last letter of the line to align with the right margin. This gives a very nice look to the manuscript, and it also allows the reader to maintain a constant left-to-right scan while reading the manuscript. It’s more comfortable. The reader doesn’t have to adjust the right-side scan of his eyes for each line. This is why the text in this document is right-justified. It looks nicer and it’s easier to read.

Document Type

Restricted Thesis

Recommended Citation

Gribat, Joseph E., "Business Process Reengineering as it Relates to the Accounts Payable System of the United States Postal Service" (1995). All Theses, Dissertations, and Capstone Projects. 184.
https://griffinshare.fontbonne.edu/all-etds/184