Michele Dassisti
email: m.dassisti@poliba.it

FOR CONTINUOUS PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENT OF MANUFACTURING PROCESSES

Keywords: BUSINESS PROCESS RE-ENGINEERING, TQM, PERFORMANCE Continuous Performance Improvement, Business Process Reengineering, Continuous Quality Improvement, Hybrid methodology, decisional toolkit

The process of selecting the right approach, as well as the right tool to apply for a specific case, can still be significantly complex, because of the huge number of solutions available and also due to the lack of commonly agreed criteria that explains and describes their usefulness (see [START_REF] Aguilar-Savén | Business process modelling: Review and framework[END_REF], [START_REF] Mohanty | Reengineering of materials management system: A case study[END_REF]); some authors recognises this need by introducing the idea of a system innovation "tool-kit", like in [START_REF] Dooley | Decision support system for the management of systems change[END_REF] where this is there adopted and deployed with a slight different aim.

The scope of this paper is to propose an "hybrid" methodology (here named "HY-CHANGE" from HYbrid CHANGE) to provide a useful guide to support decisions in the "changes exercises" that quite frequently occur into organisations. The HY-CHANGE lends several ideas from BPR, CPI and CQI approaches present in literature so far, with particular reference to the two approaches combined [START_REF] Altinkemer | Business process reengineering and organisational performance: an exploration of issues[END_REF], [START_REF] Harvey | OD ,CQI and BPR: a comparative approach[END_REF], [START_REF] Yeo | Guest editorial, Management of change: from CQI to BPR and beyond[END_REF], [START_REF] Shani | Reengineering, Total Quality Management and Socio-technical Systems Approaches to Organizational Change: Towards an Eclectic Approach?[END_REF], [START_REF] Halacmi | Process reengineering in the public sector: learning SME private lessons[END_REF]), trying to integrate methodologies and tools there applied.

Business Process Re-Engineering

The widely-accepted definition of Businesses Process Reengineering (BPR) comes originally in 1990 from Hammer and Champy, who define it as <<the fundamental rethinking and radical re-design of business processes to achieve dramatic improvements in critical, contemporary measures of performance such as cost, quality, speed, service and speed>> as reported in [START_REF] Aldowaisan | A framework for developing technical process reengineering designs[END_REF]. Apart the significant naming issue of several change projects (see [START_REF] Dobson | Business Process Reengineering (BPR) Versus Outsourcing-Critical Perspectives[END_REF] for an interesting discussion), a plethora of Business Process Reengineering (BPR) cases and approaches have been proposed in literature; according to this one cited as being normative [START_REF] Eisner | Reengineering yourself and your company[END_REF], [START_REF] Im | Competence and impact of tools for BPR[END_REF], [START_REF] Grover | Business process reengineering: a tutorial on the concept, evolution, method, technology and application[END_REF], Talluri (2000), [START_REF] Glykas | Management science semantics for object-oriented business modelling in BPR[END_REF], [START_REF] Cameron | Using business process re-engineering for the development of production efficiency in companies making engineered to order products[END_REF], [START_REF] Kim | Designing performance analysis and IDEF0 for enterprise modelling in BPR[END_REF]). These widely -and also recently upcoming-different views of BPR may be taken as the evidence that this subject area is yet to be mature. Some authors state that, even though BPR is a fascinating concept, it is simply another managerial "fad", because business systems are never reengineered, they simply develop [START_REF] Jones | An example of the application of production system design tools for the implementation of Business Process Reengineering[END_REF], [START_REF] Altinkemer | Business process reengineering and organisational performance: an exploration of issues[END_REF], [START_REF] Chang | Business process re-engineering in SMEs: current evidences[END_REF], [START_REF] Guimaraes | Outcomes assessment of Business process reengineering[END_REF]): the concept of the "improvement paradox" well represents this situation according to [START_REF] Keating | Overcoming the improvement paradox[END_REF]. This top-down radical perspective of change, sometimes named as "organisational change philosophy" (see [START_REF] Sarkis | The strategic evaluation of candidate business process reengineering projects[END_REF], is recognised as an high risk and difficult task by [START_REF] Kutucuoglu | Enabling BPR in Maintenance Through a Performance Measurement System Framework[END_REF] and by [START_REF] Terziovski | Successful predictors of business process reengineering (BPR) in financial services[END_REF]: with the increasing of implementations the stress turned to a more mild concept of "change" over the last decade. Some authors, in fact, introduced the concept of categories of change like [START_REF] Dooley | Changing the New Product Development Process: Reengineering or Continuous Quality Improvement?[END_REF], while others recognise a sort of continuum between continuous and radical changes like [START_REF] Al-Mashari | Business process reengineering: a survey of international experience[END_REF]: here BPR is perceived in an holistic vision as <<. . .a continuum of change initiatives with varying degrees of radicalness ….., at the heart of which is to deliver superior performance standards through establishing process sustainable capability.>>.

In the author's view, BPR implementation may differ either for the different scopes of its application or for the perspective felt by end-users. Accordingly, four different perspectives can be used to distinguish different applications, as follows.

From an operational perspective of BPR implementations, the focus is on business processes and its correct management, that means to give priority to those real-flow of adding-value activities aimed to realise a product or a service as sustained by [START_REF] Im | Competence and impact of tools for BPR[END_REF]. In the operational perspective of BPR fall also those application strongly relying on Information Technologies (IT) as critical enabler of change (as stressed by [START_REF] Grover | Business process reengineering: a tutorial on the concept, evolution, method, technology and application[END_REF]), even though it is not so clear the correlation between IT investment and BPR rate of success according to [START_REF] Willcocks | How Radical Was IT-Enabled BPR? Evidence on Financial and Business Impacts[END_REF] and [START_REF] Terziovski | Successful predictors of business process reengineering (BPR) in financial services[END_REF]. Several project management efforts fall also in this category, for budgeting and scheduling scopes according to [START_REF] Al-Mashari | Business process reengineering: a survey of international experience[END_REF].

According to a dynamical-evolutionary perspective, the focus of implementations of BPR can be classified more according on the scope than on the activities, suggesting the need to combine radical re-engineering activities (the revolutionary stage of [START_REF] Choi | Conceptualising continuous improvement: implications for organisational change[END_REF]) with initiatives and methods aiming at a continuous improvement of the performances according to O'Neill and Sohal (1999) (evolutionary stage as in [START_REF] Choi | Conceptualising continuous improvement: implications for organisational change[END_REF]). Other authors stress on flexibility to develop solutions from the future needs, i.e. taking into account the dynamical nature of organisations as in [START_REF] Fitzgerald | Business Process Reengineering and Flexibility: A Case for Unification[END_REF].

From an organisational perspective, implementing a BPR methodology requires sharing a vision and motivating personnel (O'Neill andSohal (1999), De Bruyn and[START_REF] De Bruyn | From CQI to BPR: Two case studies in personnel administration[END_REF]). Main problem addressed is the top-management commitment according to [START_REF] Choi | Conceptualising continuous improvement: implications for organisational change[END_REF] and to create a shared vision for realising the changes: it is the most common statement for the success of any BPR action [START_REF] Altinkemer | Business process reengineering and organisational performance: an exploration of issues[END_REF], [START_REF] Terziovski | Successful predictors of business process reengineering (BPR) in financial services[END_REF]). Stakeholder commitment is often addressed as, for example, in [START_REF] Teng | Developing strategic perspectives on Business Process Reengineering: from process reconfiguration to organisational change[END_REF]. The constant focus on business processes represent a critical success factor for any BPR initiative as sustained by [START_REF] Gunasekaran | Business Process Reengineering: modelling and analysis[END_REF].

Finally, from a systemic perspective, implementing a BPR means to stress the necessity for a suitable environment to manage the change, where customers have to play an important role according to [START_REF] Terziovski | Successful predictors of business process reengineering (BPR) in financial services[END_REF]. System's theory recognises that organisation's business processes are fragmented into sub-processes and tasks, that are carried out by operators belonging to several specialised functional area within the organisation. In this light, the expected result of a BPR action is a plan of improvements and their implementations, also according to [START_REF] O'neill | Business Process Reengineering: A review of recent literature[END_REF].

A number of tools and techniques to implement BPR have been proposed so far, independently of the different perspectives above cited: still poor attention was paid on the way BPR can be implemented, as also sustained by [START_REF] Kutucuoglu | Enabling BPR in Maintenance Through a Performance Measurement System Framework[END_REF] despite their significant impact in terms of incremental effects, particularly as concerns organisational learning. All these change initiatives can be viewed to fall under the CPI umbrella, since their final effect is always related to the improvement of performance level [START_REF] Bessant | An evolutionary model of continuous improvement behaviour[END_REF], [START_REF] Vits | Performance improvement theory[END_REF]). Methodologies and tools adopted in BPR actions, sometime named "technological enablers", are quite often difficult to bring together or even to integrate; tentative to provide helpful guides is represented by frameworks (see, e.g. [START_REF] Mansar | Best practices in business process redesign: validation of a redesign framework[END_REF]) which, on the other hand, lack of practical applicability.

To the aim of the present paper, firstly several tools were grouped in classes, according to the similarity of their scope, and then characterised later on to let them be used as ready on-hand. The following list is a non exhaustive picture of the most known or adopted tools found in literature for BPR applications:

•

A set of tools is oriented to support collaborative group working in any form; these are namely: Group technology and cellular manufacturing to manage group working as in [START_REF] Jones | An example of the application of production system design tools for the implementation of Business Process Reengineering[END_REF]; X-ware approach [START_REF] Dennis | Breaking the rules: success and failure in groupware-supported business process reengineering[END_REF]Corbit et al. (2000)); IT functions [START_REF] Willcocks | IT-enabled business process re-engineering: organisational and human resource dimensions[END_REF] [START_REF] Gunasekaran | The role of information technology in business process reengineering[END_REF]; Electronic Commerce in [START_REF] Attaran | Exploring the relationship between information technology and business process reengineering[END_REF]; brainstorming workshop in [START_REF] Kim | Designing performance analysis and IDEF0 for enterprise modelling in BPR[END_REF]; cooperative network management systems in [START_REF] Ray | A Re-engineering methodology for cooperative management of enteprise networks[END_REF].

• A set of tools oriented to support people management; amongst all: change management in O' Neill and Sohal (1999); team work and motivation [START_REF] Choudrie | Teams and their Motivation for Business Process Reengineering: A Research Note[END_REF]; [START_REF] Gunasekaran | Business Process Reengineering: modelling and analysis[END_REF]); seven S in [START_REF] Eisner | Reengineering yourself and your company[END_REF]; role theories of [START_REF] Launonen | Team roles in business process re-engineering[END_REF]; employee empowerment in [START_REF] Gunasekaran | Business Process Reengineering: modelling and analysis[END_REF]; ontological approaches [START_REF] Glykas | Management science semantics for object-oriented business modelling in BPR[END_REF], [START_REF] Irani | Business Process Re-Engineering: A Modeling Perspective[END_REF]).

• A set of tools oriented to support decision making by recurring to visual support of any form; a part of these are: flow charts; data flow diagrams; action diagrams; role-activity diagram and role-interactions diagrams; Gantt chart in [START_REF] Aguilar-Savén | Business process modelling: Review and framework[END_REF]; IDEF diagrams; top-map business flows and skills [START_REF] Jones | An example of the application of production system design tools for the implementation of Business Process Reengineering[END_REF]; [START_REF] Aguilar-Savén | Business process modelling: Review and framework[END_REF]; [START_REF] Kim | Designing performance analysis and IDEF0 for enterprise modelling in BPR[END_REF]); formal modelling (e.g. in [START_REF] Klauk | Formal business process engineering based on graph grammars[END_REF]); observation analysis in [START_REF] Aldowaisan | Business process reengineering: an approach for process mapping[END_REF]; process mapping and visualisation [START_REF] O'neill | Business Process Reengineering: A review of recent literature[END_REF]; [START_REF] Gunasekaran | The role of information technology in business process reengineering[END_REF] [START_REF] Papinniemi | Creating a model of process innovation for reengineering of business and manufacturing[END_REF]; Just-in-time in [START_REF] Fitzgerald | Business Process Reengineering and Flexibility: A Case for Unification[END_REF].

• A set of tools is oriented to support decision making by recurring to familiar intuitive support; these are: Soft system methodology in [START_REF] Chan | A conceptual and analytical framework for Business process reengineering[END_REF]; 3Cs model in [START_REF] Irani | Empirical testing of a leadership and planning model for reengineering business process[END_REF]; Clean-slate analysis as in [START_REF] Dennis | Breaking the rules: success and failure in groupware-supported business process reengineering[END_REF]; simulation and scenario analysis; hybrid dynamic modelling [START_REF] Kim | Designing performance analysis and IDEF0 for enterprise modelling in BPR[END_REF]; [START_REF] Zakarian | Process analysis and reengineering[END_REF]); process orientation view in MacIntosh (1997); benchmarking in [START_REF] Al-Mashari | Business process reengineering: a survey of international experience[END_REF]; gap analysis as in [START_REF] Dooley | Changing the New Product Development Process: Reengineering or Continuous Quality Improvement?[END_REF]; creative thinking in [START_REF] Al-Mashari | Business process reengineering: a survey of international experience[END_REF]; Analytical hierarchical process in [START_REF] Sarkis | The strategic evaluation of candidate business process reengineering projects[END_REF]; strategic justification of enterprise technology in [START_REF] Sarkis | The strategic evaluation of candidate business process reengineering projects[END_REF]; functional economical analysis in [START_REF] Kim | Designing performance analysis and IDEF0 for enterprise modelling in BPR[END_REF]; strength-weakness-opportunities-threats (SWOT) analysis (see [START_REF] Dyson | Strategic development and SWOT analysis at the University of Warwick[END_REF]); requirement engineering in [START_REF] Jackson | System development[END_REF]; six hut of De [START_REF] De Bono | The use of lateral thinking[END_REF].

Most of the BPR applications found in literature adopt a customised mixture of tools, as a function of the specific application and of the decision maker. The question here put is that this is usually tied to the subjective judgement of the expert adopting it, without a clear rationale in the use either according to the scope or to its stage in the change process.

Continuous Quality Improvement

Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) has its roots in Total Quality Management and Deming according to [START_REF] Dooley | Changing the New Product Development Process: Reengineering or Continuous Quality Improvement?[END_REF]. CQI is essentially an agreed company-wide strategy, made of an integrated and sequential steps that can help tracking the progress toward continuously improving quality-driven business processes; quite often it has been defined as a philosophy by [START_REF] Irani | Total Quality Management and Corporate Culture: constructs of organisational excellence[END_REF]. CQI efforts typically focus on small, incremental changes, which modify in time and thus eventually creating a large, cumulative effect: for these reasons CQI processes can lead to radical breakthroughs. CQI is sometimes described as a bottom-up approach -a form of "learning by doing" as in [START_REF] Dooley | Changing the New Product Development Process: Reengineering or Continuous Quality Improvement?[END_REF]-that maximises competitiveness of an organisation through the continual improvement of the quality of its products, service, people, process and environment [START_REF] Spencer | Model of organization and total quality management: A comparison and critical evaluation[END_REF], [START_REF] Harvey | OD ,CQI and BPR: a comparative approach[END_REF], [START_REF] Conca | Development of a measure to assess quality management in certified firms[END_REF]).

The four perspectives recognised above for the BPR application can be similarly identified in the implementation of CQI approaches; these are namely:

• the Operational perspective, where the stress in CQI implementation is on data and evidences to measure improvements, but also it is on processes, with their centrality in the continuous strive and appointment to add value to them, by redrawing or improvements;

• the dynamical-evolutionary perspective is intrinsically embedded into any CQI implementation, in its continuous improvement principle, made of a never-ending adaptive loop of search for new challenges; the natural reference to external benchmarks makes the need for innovation and improvement a sort of "automatic" mechanisms, where the change become a sort of routinely task to perform;

• the organisational perspective is the so called "soft aspects" of CQI as in [START_REF] Rahman | Soft CQI, hard CQI, and organisational performance relationships: an empirical investigation[END_REF] -see the human factors such as the involvement of all organisational levels, training and team-working)-; the people focus of [START_REF] Ghobadian | CQI implementation: an empirical examination and proposed generic model[END_REF] or the total quality culture, according to [START_REF] Irani | Total Quality Management and Corporate Culture: constructs of organisational excellence[END_REF], are evidences of the particular attention paid during CQI efforts;

• according to the systemic perspective, CQI stresses on the concept of customer focus, extended quite often to market and stakeholders as in [START_REF] Ghobadian | CQI implementation: an empirical examination and proposed generic model[END_REF], as well as to the attention paid to cooperative supplier relations according to [START_REF] Rahman | Soft CQI, hard CQI, and organisational performance relationships: an empirical investigation[END_REF].

Several tools and techniques for CQI implementation have been proposed so far; a non exhaustive list of these is here presented, grouped into homogeneous classes according to their scope of use found in CQI applications:

• a class of tools oriented to support decision making by recurring to logical supports; it includes: Symptom-Origin-Remedy-Action methodology in [START_REF] Kim | Designing performance analysis and IDEF0 for enterprise modelling in BPR[END_REF]; Analytical Hierarchy Process [START_REF] Noci | Selecting quality-based programmes in small firms: A comparison between the fuzzy linguistic approach and the analytic hierarchy process[END_REF]; [START_REF] Chin | An AHP based study of critical factors for CQI implementation in Shanghai manufacturing industries[END_REF]); benchmarking [START_REF] Ghobadian | CQI implementation: an empirical examination and proposed generic model[END_REF]; multiple-attribute decision making as in [START_REF] Noci | Selecting quality-based programmes in small firms: A comparison between the fuzzy linguistic approach and the analytic hierarchy process[END_REF]; fuzzy linguistic approach in [START_REF] Noci | Selecting quality-based programmes in small firms: A comparison between the fuzzy linguistic approach and the analytic hierarchy process[END_REF], Total System Intervention in [START_REF] Clarke | Reengineering an Information System: A Case Study in Risk Reduction[END_REF]; theory Z of [START_REF] Eisner | Reengineering yourself and your company[END_REF]; 5W-1H approach (What, Who, Why, When, Where, How);

• a class of tools oriented to support decision making by highlighting evidences (either by visual help or appropriately presenting factual data); it includes: graphs, Pareto diagrams, histograms, cause-effect diagrams (Hishikawa diagrams), check sheet, stratification diagrams; scatter, affinity, relation, systematic and matrix diagrams [START_REF] Ozeki | Handbook of Quality Tools[END_REF], [START_REF] Ledolter | Statistical Quality Control[END_REF]);

• a set of tools oriented to put evidence on cause-effect links; it includes: statistical process control; process capability; control charts, process control diagrams, standardisation in [START_REF] Ozeki | Handbook of Quality Tools[END_REF]; 6 sigma as in [START_REF] Terziovski | The adoption of continuous improvement and innovation strategies in Australian manufacturing firms[END_REF]; Failure Mode effect Analysis as in [START_REF] Terziovski | The adoption of continuous improvement and innovation strategies in Australian manufacturing firms[END_REF]; FMS as in Chan and Jiang (2001); SMED; visual control; multivariate analysis (and related clustering analysis) as in [START_REF] Jobson | Applied multivariate data analysis[END_REF]; theory of constraint; group problem solving as in [START_REF] Ledolter | Statistical Quality Control[END_REF];

• a class of tools oriented to support management efforts by facilitating coordination and people management; it includes: brainstorming and idea development checklist; quality circles as in [START_REF] Ozeki | Handbook of Quality Tools[END_REF]; leadership as in [START_REF] Samson | The relationship between total quality management practices and operation performance[END_REF], Total Productive Maintenance as in [START_REF] Terziovski | The adoption of continuous improvement and innovation strategies in Australian manufacturing firms[END_REF]; reliability-centred maintenance (RCM) as in [START_REF] Hipkin | CQI and BPR: lessons for maintenance management[END_REF]; 5 S housekeeping as in [START_REF] Terziovski | The adoption of continuous improvement and innovation strategies in Australian manufacturing firms[END_REF];

supportive leadership as in [START_REF] Terziovski | The adoption of continuous improvement and innovation strategies in Australian manufacturing firms[END_REF]; teamwork as in [START_REF] Routhieaux | CQI/CQI effectiveness at team and departmental level[END_REF]; lean manufacturing; focus on customer (see [START_REF] Temponi | Scalable enterprise systems: Quality management issues[END_REF]); the "Seven S model" of organisation -structure, strategy, system, skill, style, staff and shared values -Jansson and Eschenbächerx ( 2004);

• a class of tools oriented to measure gaps from given references; it includes: performance measures as [START_REF] Chenhall | Reliance on manufacturing performance measures, total quality[END_REF]; benchmarking as in O'Neill and Sohal (1999); Quality Function Deployment as in [START_REF] Terziovski | The adoption of continuous improvement and innovation strategies in Australian manufacturing firms[END_REF]; quality deployment chart as in [START_REF] Ozeki | Handbook of Quality Tools[END_REF]; performance measurement systems as in [START_REF] Lockamy | A strategic alignment approach for effective business process reengineering: linking strategy, processes and customer for competitive advantage[END_REF]; gap analysis as in [START_REF] Dooley | Changing the New Product Development Process: Reengineering or Continuous Quality Improvement?[END_REF]; scenario analysis;

• a set of tools oriented to synchronise and manage improvement initiatives; it includes: Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle as in [START_REF] Ghobadian | CQI implementation: an empirical examination and proposed generic model[END_REF]; ISO 9000 as in [START_REF] Terziovski | The adoption of continuous improvement and innovation strategies in Australian manufacturing firms[END_REF], systemic perspective as in [START_REF] Routhieaux | CQI/CQI effectiveness at team and departmental level[END_REF]; auditing techniques as in [START_REF] Terziovski | The adoption of continuous improvement and innovation strategies in Australian manufacturing firms[END_REF].

Up to date it seems there is no structured methodology or industry standard that regulates the introduction of a CQI process according to [START_REF] Hipkin | CQI and BPR: lessons for maintenance management[END_REF]. This fact may represent a problem for the success of any CQI effort.

BPR vs CQI

Substantial differences still remains in the vision of change processes from BPR and CQI, due to their nature and scopes:

while the objective of CQI is to get some small scale and continuous improvements through an incremental approach -the evolutionary stage of [START_REF] Choi | Conceptualising continuous improvement: implications for organisational change[END_REF]-BPR aims to reach a radical change of the process, presumed to result in a "dramatic" change according to O'Neill and Sohal (1999) -the revolutionary stage of [START_REF] Choi | Conceptualising continuous improvement: implications for organisational change[END_REF]-.

The starting point can be also different: the CQI starts from the existing processes while the radical improvement of BPR asks to start "from scratch". Hammer & Champy have suggested that <<TQM should be used to keep a company's processes tuned up between the periodic replacements that only BPR can accomplish>> in their [START_REF] Hammer | Le reengineering[END_REF]. This means that the idea of integrating CQI and BPR is always present, but it was rarely put into practice. The question appears here: how to do it?

Coexistence of Business Process Reengineering and Continuous Quality Improvement within the same organisation is not commonly agreed (see, e.g., Rotab [START_REF] Rotab Khan | Business process reengineering of an air cargo handling process[END_REF], [START_REF] Al-Mashari | Business process reengineering: a survey of international experience[END_REF], [START_REF] Temponi | Scalable enterprise systems: Quality management issues[END_REF]). Sometimes these are perceived as two alternatives to the organisation to pursue improvement, since BPR is mainly top-down driven on the contrary of the CQI approach, more participative in its nature. Sometime BPR is seen as an extension of the concepts of the continuous improvement of the CQI, since this latter put the basis for BPR efforts (see, e.g. [START_REF] Grover | Business process reengineering: a tutorial on the concept, evolution, method, technology and application[END_REF], [START_REF] Eisner | Reengineering yourself and your company[END_REF], [START_REF] Al-Mashari | Creating a Fit Between BPR and IT Infrastructure: A Proposed Framework for Effective Implementation[END_REF]). Both views are far from reality of things, due to the reference to trivial stereotypical categories.

Several studies have attempted to distinguish the two practices in terms of their differences and similarities (see, e.g. [START_REF] Al-Mashari | Creating a Fit Between BPR and IT Infrastructure: A Proposed Framework for Effective Implementation[END_REF]).

Based on the above reasoning, it is possible to affirm that CQI and BPR share common features, either of scope (i.e. strategic) or of goal (i.e. tactical) while maintaining several aspects different. To sustain the potentialities of integration there are authors that sustain <<Organizations which have adopted CQI show greater use of strategic and process management techniques, benchmarking and self-assessment, which place them in an ideal position to make use of re-engineering techniques.>> as Al-Mashari et al. ( 2001). An interesting concept of change continuum from BPR to CQI has been proposed

in [START_REF] Dooley | Changing the New Product Development Process: Reengineering or Continuous Quality Improvement?[END_REF], since both approaches have common underlying goals but differ by means adopted; this last concept is here embraced, since it is closer to the reality of things and thus to the natural evolution of organisations. New questions on their "coexistence" or their "complementarily" are still on the ground, thus opening new spaces for the search and the experimentation of new hybrid models based on CQI and BPR. Most of the outcomes present in literature on change management are based on general prescription (say top-down point of view), which mostly belongs to the organisational perspective (see, e.g., [START_REF] Teng | Developing strategic perspectives on Business Process Reengineering: from process reconfiguration to organisational change[END_REF]; O'Neill and Sohal (1999), [START_REF] Altinkemer | Business process reengineering and organisational performance: an exploration of issues[END_REF], [START_REF] Chan | A conceptual and analytical framework for Business process reengineering[END_REF], [START_REF] Choudrie | Teams and their Motivation for Business Process Reengineering: A Research Note[END_REF], [START_REF] Sutcliffe | Leadership behaviour and business process reengineering (BPR) outcomes An empirical analysis of 30 BPR projects[END_REF], [START_REF] Spencer | Model of organization and total quality management: A comparison and critical evaluation[END_REF]). Other sources are more technical (say bottom-up point of view), i.e. more oriented on suggesting a what-if approach, belonging to an operative perspective (see, e.g., [START_REF] Aldowaisan | Business process reengineering: an approach for process mapping[END_REF], [START_REF] Jones | An example of the application of production system design tools for the implementation of Business Process Reengineering[END_REF], [START_REF] Aguilar-Savén | Business process modelling: Review and framework[END_REF]) , Corbit et al. (2000), [START_REF] Klauk | Formal business process engineering based on graph grammars[END_REF], [START_REF] Dennis | Breaking the rules: success and failure in groupware-supported business process reengineering[END_REF], [START_REF] Kim | Designing performance analysis and IDEF0 for enterprise modelling in BPR[END_REF]).

For the scopes of the hybrid methodology presented, the deep analogies of BPR and CQI has been exploited to form the strategic elements of the HY-CHANGE methodology, derived from well assessed scientific contributions or applicative testimonials found in literature. These analogies have been expressed in terms of focus criteria to define and follow in any CPI process, and distinguished into two groups: strategic (named strategic criteria or SC, i.e. those influencing the scope or vision guiding any change process) and tactic (named tactical criteria or TC, i.e. those operative criteria that guide all the steps of the change processes). Here following these strategic elements of HY-CHANGE methodology are listed: SC1 (strategic) -Always pursue benefits: Decide whether incremental thinking or radical change need to be performed depending on the related benefits (see, e.g. [START_REF] Dennis | Breaking the rules: success and failure in groupware-supported business process reengineering[END_REF], [START_REF] Chan | A conceptual and analytical framework for Business process reengineering[END_REF]). Improving business performance (i.e. having the aim for competitive gains) is another commonly agreed criterion of BPR and CQI.

Improvements should start from the most value-adding processes or most important to the customer as in [START_REF] Lockamy | A strategic alignment approach for effective business process reengineering: linking strategy, processes and customer for competitive advantage[END_REF].

SC2 (strategic) -Customer centered: "let the customers be"; the customer orientation is claimed as the central focus:

the problem to face is always to correctly understand who are the customer (more correctly, stakeholders) and identify their needs .

SC3(strategic) -Focus on innovation:

The use of technologies to improve processes is always claimed as a core factor -several IT oriented approaches can be found in literature (se, e.g. Attaran ( 2004))-since the most of the TC1 (tactical) -Eliminate dysfunctions: minimize or eliminate waste [START_REF] Rotab Khan | Business process reengineering of an air cargo handling process[END_REF]). The worst processes should be identified first by acquisition of information from the original sources according to [START_REF] Irani | Business Process Re-Engineering: A Modeling Perspective[END_REF]; then a vision of improvement has to be created [START_REF] Jones | An example of the application of production system design tools for the implementation of Business Process Reengineering[END_REF]), paying particular attention to the risk of overextension according to [START_REF] Altinkemer | Business process reengineering and organisational performance: an exploration of issues[END_REF]. Simplification is a wider accepted must as sustained by Rotab [START_REF] Rotab Khan | Business process reengineering of an air cargo handling process[END_REF]. The lack of management commitment and neglected or poor employees' training and orientation are often perceived as criticalities like in [START_REF] Temponi | Scalable enterprise systems: Quality management issues[END_REF]: people commitment is always a critical barrier to the common implementation of any change (either mild or radical) within an enterprise. Sometimes the need for organizational and cultural change is addressed as strategic to this aim. These points should be addressed in HY-CHANGE.

TC2 (tactical) -Feasibility: change applies where there is the highest probability of success according to [START_REF] Irani | Business Process Re-Engineering: A Modeling Perspective[END_REF], which in turns means to put achievable goals according to [START_REF] Chan | A conceptual and analytical framework for Business process reengineering[END_REF]. Identification of the decision points is thus required, where activities are developed and the control is possible.

TC3 (tactical) -Sequencing : the business process perspective is critical to success: changes are usually conceived as an ordered set of phases; generally speaking: envision, inaugurate, diagnose, redesign, reconstruct and evaluate [START_REF] Dennis | Breaking the rules: success and failure in groupware-supported business process reengineering[END_REF], [START_REF] Teng | Developing strategic perspectives on Business Process Reengineering: from process reconfiguration to organisational change[END_REF]). Combine process steps as in Rotab [START_REF] Rotab Khan | Business process reengineering of an air cargo handling process[END_REF] or design processes with alternative paths are here claimed as very important.

TC4 (tactical) -Measurement centring: collect data once at its source -see the principles of Harbour of Rotab Khan (2000)-since the process measurement is of utmost importance. For instance, the recurrence to benchmark of the performance and relative drivers is always required [START_REF] Jones | An example of the application of production system design tools for the implementation of Business Process Reengineering[END_REF], [START_REF] Altinkemer | Business process reengineering and organisational performance: an exploration of issues[END_REF], [START_REF] Kim | Designing performance analysis and IDEF0 for enterprise modelling in BPR[END_REF], Talluri ( 2000)) as well as to Balance scorecard [START_REF] Kaplan | The Balanced Scorecard-Measures that Drive Performance[END_REF].

These focus criteria, as well as the principles introduced by the four perspectives above mentioned, will be the basis of the HY-CHANGE approach proposed: these will inspire the phases and their activities for a success implementation of a change process and appropriate use of tools, as better explained in the following paragraphs.

The Decisional Tool-Kit

Most of the change applications found in literature adopt customised mixture of tools, as a function of the specific application and of the subjective rationality of the decision maker. The question put in defining HY-CHANGE is if it is possible to find a clear rationale in the choice of these to the scope of the change process. Tools is a general term here adopted to indicate methodologies, approaches, frameworks, technical solutions, procedures, or whatever techniques oriented to support decision making process at any phase of continuous performance improvement process. The basic idea of the HY-CHANGE methodology is that by appropriate criteria of use of tools it is possible to create a sort of "tool-kit" to support the change processes; this thus result a "higher-level tool" much more effective with respect to the use of tools singularly, thus endeavouring the synergic effect derived from their coordination.

In the following table 1 we firstly summarise most of the tools previously mentioned, trying to give an unique classification of the previously mentioned tools, so as to avoid duplication or uncertainty in their identification. As a consequence, a set of classes were identified, where tools were grouped according their prevalent share of scope inherited either from BPR and CQI. Thus the following list is simply a summary of all the classes introduced above. These are, namely: Groupware;

Human-ware; Managerial; Phasing: Modelling; Decisional; Problem solving; Factual; Control; Measurement. The reader can easily recognise the classes above cited for BPR and CQI, bearing in mind that each tool can belong to more than one classes but that, at the same time, it may have a prevalence of belonging to only one of these.

(Insert TABLE 1 here)

Classification and selection criteria for tools are here recognised as follows:

o Requirements (scope): tools should fit to a specific criteria or requirements explicitly declared of the phase/stage of its use.

o Conceptual features (i.e. logic behind): tools have internal logic of the tool in supporting decision making.

o Logical features (i.e. deductive tools): this feature make explicit the requirement to identify logical chains (causeeffect chains) to make explicit all the logical implications driving to problems or disturbance.

o Outputs feature (i.e. inductive tools): this aspect deals with the nature of the answer provided by the tools to the decision maker (namely qualitative/quantitative).

o Groupware features: i.e. proneness of tools to support cooperative efforts, felt as fundamental prerogative to success of CPI actions.

o Shareability features: distinguished in o Ontological: the proneness of tools to be recognised (and thus shared) by each one.

o Semantical: the proneness of tools to be understood (and thus shared) by most of the operators.

o Technical features: it is a matter in a certain sense of "hardware", i.e. the instruments or technologies adopted by the tool to be performed. It represents proneness to be implemented using standard or advanced technologies (e.g.

Information Technology).

o Provided the information of table 1, it will turn easy to select the most appropriate tool to support decisional efforts at any stage of the change process. In the following paragraph it will be explained how the HY-CHANGE methodology helps in forming the tool kit and drive to effective improvements.

The HY-CHANGE Methodology

The context of the use of the HY-CHANGE methodology here proposed is the support of decisional processes for managing performance improvement within a given enterprise or department. A semi-formal approach was followed, since research findings in similar fields indicate that formal implementation procedures have favourably influenced successful projects despite their elusive definition (e.g. the JIT success reported in [START_REF] Hipkin | CQI and BPR: lessons for maintenance management[END_REF]). Since changes processes will never be so definite in their essence, formalisation may provide a frame to understand signals and elements to be evaluated and endeavoured.

The change that might be brought by the HY-CHANGE encompasses both the revolutionary and the evolutionary phases of change, as in [START_REF] Choi | Conceptualising continuous improvement: implications for organisational change[END_REF]. It, in fact, starts from the bottom-up approach of CQI (evolutionary stage) to put the basis for build up a revolutionary stage; revolutionary changes -if ever will come-will thus result naturally fostered by the evolutionary stages, thus sharing the same bottom-up feature of the evolutionary stage. In this sense, the HY-CHANGE addresses a more pragmatic dimension with respect to BPR, focusing on real performance improvements and not funding on organisational theorems, in line with the stability criterion often claimed by top-management (see [START_REF] Choi | Conceptualising continuous improvement: implications for organisational change[END_REF] or [START_REF] Bessant | An evolutionary model of continuous improvement behaviour[END_REF]).

The recurrence to the four perspectives before mentioned is quite new and assures a structured frame for the coordinated use of already existing tools and methodologies: following system theory, in fact, perspectives allows recognising parts of problems as well as interdependencies between parts of the whole system to reach an effective answer. The systemic perspective assures a contextualisation of the actions to be performed within a clear space-time frame of the enterprise; the organisational perspective allows to contextualise tools within internal change actions within the personnel involved in the change; the operative perspective focuses onto the scope of use of the most appropriate tools and techniques; the evolutionary perspective assure the change to be self-consistent, i.e. allowing the enterprise to learn from change and continue autonomously the innovation process.

To clarify the essence of HY-CHANGE methodology, an high level semi-formal model was built using the IDEF0 syntax (Insert Figure 1 here)

The idea behind HY-CHANGE to assure a correct phasing, borrows the fundamental concept of the second principle of thermodynamics: it is always better to find the minimum-energy state of equilibrium, i.e. to explore paths which minimise the effort for improvement. The reference to specific tools and techniques thus is made in each phase using specific criteria before mentioned, providing an useful support for decisions. Local performances (per each phase), and their relations with the proceeding and succeeding ones, will allow to build a frame of global performance indicators, to control the state of change at a glance, to understand the success or the needs to improve its enacting.

The phases devised by HY-CHANGE respond to the simple logical chain of Why-What-Where-How-When-Who, widely adopted almost in any human action (consciously or not), these are namely: the push event, the preliminary study, the analysis of existing situation, the plan of improvement, the implementation and the measure & control phases. Activities to be performed within each phase are detailed below, indicating also the outcomes of these (highlighted in bold within the text), providing comments on the rationale of each phases or activity, and on the selection of the most appropriate tools, according to classes and criteria given in tables 1 and 2. For the sake of simplicity, we did not provide comments on each tool, since it is beyond the scope of the present paper, leaving to a future paper the burden to go in deeper details on tools. The show case will give the flavour of the methodology and its easy-of-use.

It is worth to stress again that activities comprised within phases are not necessarily sequential, even though it will result logically evident the temporary sequence of outputs between subsequent phases and their activities.

Push Event (WHY)

This phase responds to the SC1 criterion, i.e. putting the question of pursuing benefits. Recognising the "push event" is rarely recalled or explicitly addressed in most of the studies and the scientific approaches presented so far. Change is always driven by a specific motivation (either hidden or not), which fuels the need for change. If explicitly recognised, it may represent the key success factor of utmost importance for fostering all the phases of the improvement process.

The so-called "substantive" process introduced in [START_REF] Rijnders | A Typology of Continuous Improvement Implementation Processes[END_REF] reminds the need to identify problems or opportunities. BPR methodologies available so far prescribe, as starting point, the "establishment of business vision and objectives" as in [START_REF] Glykas | Management science semantics for object-oriented business modelling in BPR[END_REF] and also to establish the "envision" as in [START_REF] Al-Mashari | Business process reengineering: a survey of international experience[END_REF]. Understanding what the customer requires and mapping out the current process is also recognised almost universally as a critical first step for a reengineering project team as in [START_REF] Dooley | Changing the New Product Development Process: Reengineering or Continuous Quality Improvement?[END_REF]. All existing approaches does not explicitly recognise the phase here identified: the "push event" is intended as the last tangible event -i.e. that event which can be recalled or recognised and shared by a group of people as causative of unfairness or problems within the system under study-that then may motivate a business organisation to start a change process.

This phase, mostly sharing the principles of the organisational perspective above mentioned, should consist of three activities:

i) to ask for an internal and external consciousness for a change or a re-engineering ("Why are we here?" responding to SC1 criterion); this means to allow involved personnel to realise the existence of a need or an original problem either directly or indirectly. The best tools to be adopted then can be factual tools or, to a less extent, measurement tools if stronger evidences are needed from facts;

ii) to metabolise the problems/needs from managers ("Why should I do this?" responding to SC2 or TC2 criteria),

i.e. to create a convincement toward change: problem solving tools reveal very useful to this aim. Again, measurement tools and/or factual tools may provide stronger evidences to convincement;

iii) to spread the motivation throughout the organisation (responding to SC2): -human-ware or groupware tools seem the most appropriate to this aim.

All these steps are of utmost importance for the success of the whole change process: the correct understanding of the reality guarantees the true involvement of the change-teams formed (organisation should borrow principles of quality circles for team management) as well as a whole support of all levels of personnel in the improvement processes. In this regards, the degree of involvement of personnel will be a very good local performance indicator of the success of the methodology proposed at this stage .

Preliminary Study (WHAT)

As shown by an on-field researches (see [START_REF] Rijnders | A Typology of Continuous Improvement Implementation Processes[END_REF]), what stands out clearly is that companies do very little concept development and detailing: they appear to find it difficult to translate abstract concepts into practical details. The preliminary study has to provide a set of outputs corresponding to several activities to be performed:

1) To provide a clear picture of the external opportunities to change (responding to SC1 criterion), eventually from stakeholders (SC2 criterion). According to the principles of the systemic perspective, we recognise similarities of this activity with the "initiate" stage of holistic BPR of [START_REF] Al-Mashari | Business process reengineering: a survey of international experience[END_REF]: factual tools seems to be the best fitting to this aims. The inputs of this activity come from comparative techniques, providing a careful analysis of the needs of the customers or stakeholders. Also internal environment has to be studied using human-ware tools, to verify the existence of appropriate conditions to develop a plan of improvement.

2) To define the goals to pursue and to define the expected results of the change (following the ideas of the systemic perspective and the TC4 criterion): decisional tools are mostly deputed to this aim. The performance indicators for the success of this phase should be the measure the resistance to change from personnel.

Analysis of the existing situation (WHERE)

The AS-IS analysis of the existing organisational reality (information flows, resources, criticalities, etc.) responds to principles of either operational and systemic perspectives, common to any change process. Due to the complex and dynamic nature of organizations as sustained by [START_REF] Irani | Business Process Re-Engineering: An Analysis Perspective[END_REF], the outcome of this phase should be the identification of the behavioural rules (according to TC1 criterion), i.e. practices and processes actually in use within the organisation, more than a picture of performances and data of the existing processes [START_REF] Gunasekaran | Business Process Reengineering: modelling and analysis[END_REF], [START_REF] Irani | Business Process Re-Engineering: A Modeling Perspective[END_REF]).

This phase, corresponding to the "diagnose" stage of Al-Mashari et al. ( 2001) of holistic BPR, consists of several activities (all responding to the TC1 and TC4 criteria):

i) to provide a description of the processes: modelling tools can be used to this aim;

ii) to perform a functional analysis of the activities to identify the behavioural rules (according to SC3 criterion):

again modelling tools responds to this need;

iii) to recognise the interactions with the external environment (following the systemic perspective): modelling tools are preferred, even though problem solving tools may be sometime useful; iv) to design a complete performance measurement system (TC4 criterion): measurement tools re the most indicated to this aim.

The effectiveness of this phase is not easy to measure, since it is hard to compare results for a given reality without any reference benchmark; several threshold values may be adopted in each area, under the judgement of experts, to understand the pertinence of the picture taken (e.g. number of processes recognised, internal dynamics recognised, etc.).

Plan of improvement (WHEN)

This phase responds to the principles of the evolutionary perspective, by prescribing a TO-BE analysis. This phase, which corresponds to the "redesign" stage of holistic BPR of [START_REF] Al-Mashari | Business process reengineering: a survey of international experience[END_REF], requires several activities to decide the degree of changes in any local process, as follows: 1) to prepare a complete formalization of all the alternatives (TC2 criterion), whose effectiveness and efficiency need to be appraised through experimentation. Typical use of decisional tools (eventually with the support of factual tools) is indicated at this stage;

2) to evaluate the alternatives solutions of change (TC2 and TC3 criteria); using decisional tools is a very important step to perform within each area of organisation, since it may allow a faster reaction to potential adjustment eventually required. To compare alternatives can be done using problem-solving tools, where "TO-BE" solutions are compared according to parameters of Cost-Time-Quality;

3) to integrate the change actions with other similar projects. Due to the interaction or combination with other local improvements programs, a final coordination is required to decide the global level of change: phasing tools as well as managerial tools can be the best candidate to support decision making to this aim; 4) to prepare a plan of improvements (responding to TC1 criterion), indicating timing, activities and resources:

decisional tools as well as phasing tools can be adopted; 5) to diffuse the knowledge about the plan of Improvement (SC2 criterion): managerial and/or human-ware tools can be adopted for this activity, depending on the specific reality.

Performance indicators of the effectiveness of this phase can be the number of alternatives generated, the logical sequencing of the plan of improvement, the historical knowledge about similar initiatives already implemented.

Implementation (WHO)

This phase derives form the organisational perspective, and it corresponds to the "reconstruct" stage of holistic BPR of [START_REF] Al-Mashari | Business process reengineering: a survey of international experience[END_REF], consists in deploying the plan of improvement throughout the organisation and allowing to implement it.

This phase may consist of a loop of the following activities:

i) to implement local change actions (TC3 criterion), recurring to groupware and management tools;

ii) to analyse problems occurring during change actions (TC4 criterion), recurring to the use of control tools;

iii) to solve of possible local problems (TC1 criterion) using problem-solving tools or human-ware tools.; iv) whenever some of the local target improvements are not satisfied, the change process need to be dynamically reapplied. This can be done eventually reinforcing the creativeness (SC3 criterion) of the teams for the re-design of the processes using problem-solving tools (loop links in figure 1).

The whole trends of gaps between target performances and actual values in different areas can be a good indicator of the measure of the success of this phase. ii) to compare results against threshold results, using factual tools;

iii) to plan for the future change cycle again (SC3 criterion), using decisional tools.

The output of this phase is always a clear statement of the effectiveness of the change process, and its measure is the attainment of the objectives that can be -in a loop fashion-the input for the next refinement of the change process, i.e. the phase of preliminary study.

THE INDUSTRIAL SHOW CASE

An initial application of the HY-CHANGE methodology has been made directly by the author over a six-months period within an Italian small-medium enterprise (SME) working as first-tier supplier of padding's for sofa producer. The outcomes of the performance improvement action are here presented to show its use and give the flavour of potentialities as decision-support tool for continuous performance improvement of small and medium enterprises. The features of the SME will came out throughout the deployment of the methodology as it was applied. It must be clarified that narration of events here follows strictly temporal order of happenings: this will result in a mixed sequence of the phases mentioned in §4.

The push event (WHY) was realised during several brainstorming sessions, performed only with the company owners and the top management, avoiding to involve stakeholders due to the specific reality of SME (one major client was responsible for more than 95% of the total sales): the negative trends of the economic results in the last four years came out as the most critical need. Very simple factual tools (Pareto histograms and graphs) were adopted for analysing balance sheets and financial indicators; performance indicators considered in this phase were the share of market, sales trends, production volumes. Several meetings were then set-up, together with the middle management and most of the employees, to share the feeling of the criticality of change to survive. Nevertheless, it was not possible to get over historical internal stresses between management and operators: this fact turned into several difficulties in the next phases of the CPI process.

After a preliminary study (WHAT), developed jointly with the top management, it was realised that also external factors were causative of the push event, since the whole industrial sector was suffering a strong crisis due to international market dynamics. Simple factual tools (check sheets for bibliographical research) and human-ware tools (group problem solving techniques) were adopted to this aim. The analysis of customer's needs brought also new hints on the internal reality: the costs structure was not adequate. This analysis allowed recognising which functional areas were to address within the plant, namely: the production control, the production flows management and the processing of raw materials.

Afterward, a clear analysis of the existing situation (WHERE) was performed, adopting modelling tools (an IDEF-0 modelling of the existing processes and activities). It resulted quite clear, from the functional analysis made, the reasons for the problems highlighted in the previous phases; also by recurring to measurement tools (performance concerning non conformities) it was clear the existence of training problems of operators, as well as that typical attitude of management to a trial-and-error approach in managing emergencies (analysis of quality sheets for non conformities). Afterward, the most critical areas of intervention were found, according to the factual evidence of performances (measurement tools were adopted, namely benchmarking and Balance Scorecard methodology); these areas resulted to be: production activities, quality assurance activities and logistics activities. As a consequence, an important scrap reduction program was identified as the first goal to set, while the optimisation of nesting in the cutting of raw materials was the second one.

The outcomes of this phase suggested to go back to the root causes, before going on with remedies. We came back to the first phase (WHY) and ask the team the reasons of a so long period of absence of improvements; by using factual tools (graphs showing trends) and problem-solving tools (brainstorming sessions with Hishikawa diagrams) the reasons resulted quite clear. The size of the company and the situation of richness experienced for a longer period, in fact, brought the company to rely on the initial core strategies: almost no significant innovation were promoted for at least twenty years up to date, either for processes or for products, due mainly to managerial inertia. A set of critical performances were recognised by defining the state space (recognition of causative links between processes) and then prioritizing the strategies and areas of intervention by scoring (subjective judgements of teams and managers).

The plan of improvement (WHEN) was then designed, according to the outcomes of the preceding phases; the areas of intervention identified were the change of attitude of management and operators. A factual tool (Pareto analysis) was adopted to set up the priorities and plan the actions of improvement. Due to the fact that the management still relied on traditional global financial indicators, milestones recognised as sharable at each significant change were financial performances used after given periods of time. An adaptive phasing tool was adopted, to plan the future improvement actions after the achievement of a significant change in each area: an electronic shared agenda of activities, with the assignment of responsibility for a change to each team member. As a strategic vision of the CPI initiative, and to pursue the TC2 criterion of feasibility, it was initially decided to intervene in the three organisational areas before mentioned, independently of each other.

Despite this and the tools adopted (quality circles as managerial tools were adopted to support this effort), serious problems resulted in defining a definitive plan of improvement, since no agreement was reached between management and working teams: the main reason was the absence of serious use of performance tools to estimate the exact efforts of the actions of improvement. This criticality was realised adopting a phasing tool (in-process audit review of the CPI action at the fist milestone selected). Finally, a final goal was set-up, namely to implement a tighter control of industrial performances with the strong direct involvement of management. To this aim, three teams were formed to pursue the respective goals (namely flows; materials; costs); in each team were included one external consultant and at least one operator. The author took the role of project leader. The implementation phase (WHO) came after three months, with the implementation of those corrective actions and deployment before planned. In particular, a redesign of the layout was experimented and implement according to a precise scheduling in terms of time, responsibility and objectives to achieve (using brainstorming sessions according to the organisational perspective). A partial solution was only possible as concern the re-design of the productive flows, since the amount of the investments required and the related stronger organizational implications. Nevertheless this solutions resulted good, since in the planning phase the scenario evaluation (problem solving tool) allowed to include the occurrence of this partial changes and thus to devise the related corrective actions to be taken in the next future.

The measurement and control phase (HOW) was performed iteratively during all the CPI process. According to measurement criterion (TC4), and with the scope of constantly measure and control the change process taking place, a "dashboard of performances" was set and shared between different teams. The dashboard gathered constantly the local measurements and the business performances during the change period. Threshold values were set, using a gap analysis, to compare actual performances with the initial situation. The performance measurement system consisted of a number of performance indicators per each phase, measuring the gaps ( ) between the targets fixed and the actual state of the performances at i-th time:

i = [( actual i-th value) -(i-th target)]/ (i-th target).

This performance improvement process brought to a slight improvement of some performance indicators within the six months time-frame observed, that can be estimated as follows: +10% of productivity growth; +34% reduction of the throughput time achieved after the implementation of a new lay-out.

DISCUSSION AND FINAL REMARKS

In the practical application of HY-CHANGE methodology presented in this paper, it resulted questionable if other factors contributed to positive results reported in paragraph 5, given the synergic effect of the participation of manager and operators to teams, with positive side-effects in the productivity and organisational climate.

This means that the show case is far from being a proof or even a validation of effectiveness of the methodology.

Nevertheless, all team members appreciated the rational structuring of a decisional improvement process, which is always very complex to start from scratch.

Starting from the postulation the coexistence of more than one approach is feasible and that complementarities has to be endeavoured, the proposed hybrid methodology goes into the direction of the project-enabled management of change of [START_REF] Yeo | Guest editorial, Management of change: from CQI to BPR and beyond[END_REF], trying to cover the whole spectrum of changes -from gradual to radical. Despite its simplicity, HY-CAHNGE' usefulness rely in the logical structuring according to approach phases and use of tools to perform a continuous performance improvement processes; by relying on the idea of finding objective criteria of optimal use of tools and techniques in each phase it tries to provide an effective tool-kit that may help to improve effectiveness of change processes as well as its effectiveness, in line with the transformational nature of the organisations. As a final remark, the proposed methodology still does not answer the question of how to transform the employees into a push factor, to overcome the improvement paradox often claimed for failure of change processes as stressed in [START_REF] Keating | Overcoming the improvement paradox[END_REF], as also directed witnessed in the show case.

Future improvements of the methodology presented can be a deeper level of detail in tool selection, exploring their inner features and potentialities with respect to continuous improvement process and also a deeper understanding of interfaces between activities of each phase, so as to better control the flows of outputs, which still remains a subjective matter of the decision maker.

The final goal of any methodology for supporting continuous process improvement should be eliminating subjectivity in the operative decisional phases of change processes -almost widely claimed as inherently subjective-, as well as within the specific goals and targets set, while allowing room for intuition and strategic decisions with respect to the specificity of each organization.

Acknowledgement

This research was partially funded by Italian Ministery of Research (MIUR) within the F.R. A. 2002-2003

  required to follow the last innovations of technologies. Also thinking parallel as in Rotab Khan (2000) can afford different innovation.

  [START_REF] Kim | Designing performance analysis and IDEF0 for enterprise modelling in BPR[END_REF],[START_REF] Sarkis | The strategic evaluation of candidate business process reengineering projects[END_REF]), as summarised in figure1at an high level of detail. The HY-CHANGE consists of a sequential phases of the performance improvement process (boxes interconnected in figure1) -as detailed in the following subparagraphs-. Each phase consists of a set of steps (i.e. a specific piece of action): a sort of practical guide thus results for operative purposes.

  set a shared policy or a strategy of change (SC1 criterion); in the light of principles of the organisational perspective, this means ensuring a true leadership of the change of any order, i.e. a deeper convincement for change overcoming also personal resistances (seeHaume et al. (2000) for some hints): adopting decisional or measurement tools is preferable at this stage. 4) To identify involved areas (following the TC2 criterion) and to form the task groups responsible for the whole change process, according to the principles of the organisational perspective: managerial tools or human-ware tools are good decisional support in this activity.

  According to the principles of the evolutionary perspective, at given milestones or after the final change process, it follows the checking the attainment of global performances from the change process and the verification of satisfaction goals established. This phase, which corresponds to the "evaluate" stage of holistic BPR of[START_REF] Al-Mashari | Business process reengineering: a survey of international experience[END_REF], and it is thus phased in a cycle of the following activities: i)to measure local performances and evaluation of global performances (TC4 criterion): measurement tools are obviously the most appropriate;

Figure 1

 1 Figure1IDEF-0 structure of HY-CHANGE (red arcs= responsibilities; green arcs = feedback loops; blue arcs = outcomes of phases; black arcs = input information and criteria)

  referring to the capability of outcomes to be consistent with scopes of different tools but in different contexts.Taking into account these features, the following table clarifies the level of congruence of each feature (column) here introduced with the scope of classes of tools (rows) cited in table 1:

	(Insert TABLE 2. here)
	F o r
	P
	e
	e r
	R e v
	i e
	w
	O n l
	y

Operability features, distinguished in o INTER_operability: referring to the capability of outcomes to be consistent with scopes of different tools but in the same context.

o INTRA_operability:

  program.

	F o r F o r F o r F o r F o r F o r
	P P P P P P
	e e e e e e
	e r e r e r e r e r e r
	R e v R e v R e v R e v R e v R e v
	i e i e i e i e i e i e
	w w w w w w
	O n l O n l O n l O n l O n l O n l
	y y y y y y

"HY-CHANGE": An Hybrid Methodology for Continuous Performance Improvement of manufacturing processes -MICHELE DASSISTI

TABLE 1 -

 1 Definition of classes of tools and methodologiesGroup technology and cellular manufacturing to manage group working ; X-ware approach; expert systems ; web-based automation; Electronic Data Interchange; multimedia; image processing; Computer Aided -X technologies; Concurrent Engineering ; Electronic Commerce; brainstorming workshop; cooperative network management systems Total Productive Maintenance; reliability-centred maintenance; 5 S housekeeping; supportive leadership; teamwork; lean manufacturing; focus on customer; the "Seven S model" of organisation Phasing Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle; quality standards; systemic perspective; Gantt chart; P.E.R.T.; C.P.M.; audit techniques Modelling Role activity diagram and role interactions diagrams; IDEF diagrams; top map business flows and skills; formal modelling ; observation analysis; process mapping and visualisation; coloured Petri nets; object oriented methods; work flows techniques; stream analysis; process prototyping and simulation; process innovation; hybrid dynamic modelling; Soft system methodology; 3Cs model; Clean-slate analysis; simulation and scenario analysis; process orientation view; benchmarking; gap analysis; Analytical hierarchical process; strategic justification of enterprise technology; functional economical analysis; SWOT analysis; requirement engineering; six hut; multiple-attribute decision making; Symptom-Origin-Remedy-Action methodology; Analytical Hierarchy Process; benchmarking; fuzzy linguistic approach; Total System Intervention; theory Z; 5W-1H; creative thinking; brainstorming and idea development checklist;

	Tools

Managerial quality circles; leadership; Factual Graphs; Pareto diagrams; histograms; cause-effect diagrams; check sheet; stratification diagrams; scatter diagrams; affinity diagrams; relation diagrams; systematic and matrix diagrams.

http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/tprs Email: ijpr@lboro.ac.ukInternational Journal of Production Research

Control

statistical process control; process capability; control charts; process control diagrams; standardisation; 6 sigma; Failure Mode effect Analysis; FMS; SMED; visual control; multivariate analysis; theory of constraint; Just-in-time.