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The purpose of this paper is to report on the Bologna Process in the light of globalisation and examine how it affects curriculum and engineering education developments.

The growing need for creative competitiveness and the striving for specific profiles of engineering qualifications that are of high quality whilst taking account of diversity, transparency have resulted in the declaration of the Bologna Process. The qualifications framework proposed involving the cycle systems are examined taking account of globalization, quality assurance, management and diversity of needs. The future opportunities are explored taking account of global expectations.

The present research reveals that the Bologna Process provides a means through which higher education institutions (HEIs) can be encouraged to provide more attractive curricula for the younger generation for differing cultures whilst catering for the broad range of engineering fields where they could become more active later. The point is made that it serves to re‐invent engineering to meet the needs of the twenty‐first century.

The present investigation focuses on the Bologna Process and its implications on engineering education in Europe. Future work hopes to extend this to other disciplines and to examine global effects in diverse cultures and also from gender, economic and development perspectives.

This paper could provoke HEIs outside Europe to evaluating their policies, revise strategies and moderate existing provisions, thereby assessing impact of the Bologna Process on engineering education in different countries and cultures.

Account is taken of the diversity and transparency which have resulted in the declaration of the Bologna Process. The paper discusses and reports on developments, prospects and challenges faced in the engineering curriculum provision following the introduction of the Bologna Process in the culturally diverse European higher education area. The new field of process systems engineering is also reported.

The purpose of this research is to detect, through applying a process-based view, how to manage economisation of the maintenance and modification operations in offshore petroleum logistics operations.

A single case study of engineering services, more specifically, maintenance and modification service operations, on a Norwegian Sea oil platform reveals the dynamics of building network capabilities in a consistent network structure. Two layers of coordination are studied: the engineering process and its context, represented by its network of interconnected firms. This case study empirically grounds how engineering service involves managing reciprocally interdependent exchange processes in the network structure.

Pooled interdependencies are vital in understanding the nature of service provision and use, and sequential interdependencies are vital in narrating the timing of processes to reveal the nature of process emergence to coordinate strings of production events. Furthermore, the network structure, when characterised by multiple interdependent projects, is also dynamic but at a slower pace.

Through the case study, operations management is revealed to be associated with project emergence at two levels: the core process level regarding daily continuous change, including the changing interaction of multiple different and interdependent projects, and the contextual level, where features of interdependency and integration change, affecting engineering service production. This provides guidance as to the economisation of engineering services. They change not only interactions in the flow of production but also its context.

Achieving more from less is a preoccupation of many organizations in the turbulent 1990s. Midst the maelstrom of apparently mutually exclusive organizational objectives, managers respond to what may turn out to be the siren call of business process re‐engineering. Rapid assimilation of business process re‐engineering into managerial practice in the 1990s is arresting. However, a number of articles on the subject have been based on hyperbole rather than evidence. Considers and examines theoretical antecedents of business process re‐engineering within the context of this decade’s challenges. Uses empirical evidence to provide evidence‐based critical success factors for business process re‐engineering programmes. Discusses indications for future research in business process re‐engineering. Places emphasis on the need to bridge the lacuna between business process re‐engineering theory and evidence‐based practice.

As health care organizations seek innovative ways to change financing and delivery mechanisms due to escalated health care costs and increased competition, drastic changes are being sought in the form of re‐engineering. This study discusses the leader's role of re‐engineering in health care. It specifically addresses the reasons for failures in re‐engineering and argues that success depends on senior level leaders playing a critical role. Existing studies lack comprehensiveness in establishing models of re‐engineering and management guidelines. This research focuses on integrating re‐engineering and leadership processes in health care by creating a step‐by‐step model. Particularly, it illustrates the four Es: Examination, Establishment, Execution and Evaluation, as a comprehensive re‐engineering process that combines managerial roles and activities to result in successfully changed and reengineered health care organizations.

Patient process recognition and re‐engineering (PPR) has become a major concern of recent health care development and management. This paper discusses the position of the National Health Service (NHS) in the UK; where it is at present and where it aims to be. It suggests that the work of the current government in developing community care is central to the work of both the Leicester Royal Infirmary and the Peterborough Hospitals NHS Trust, when building relationships between primary (community) and secondary (hospital) health care provision. This paper aims to examine whether and how PPR can improve patient processes in the NHS. It does this through a case study of PPR in Peterborough Hospital.

Business process re‐engineering (BPR) is certainly one of the latest buzzwords and is the subject of great interest and also great controversy. Organizations need to shake themselves out of complacency to close competitive gaps and achieve superior performance standards ‐ the reason why many have embarked on huge BPR projects. In view of the high risks associated with radical change, there are, however, many problems associated with BPR. For some BPR is going off the rails before it is properly understood, and many BPR exercises are not delivering the goods. Sometimes, organizations are expecting “quick fixes”, thus displaying their lack of understanding of a complex system. It is unreasonable to expect quick results when so much change is involved, especially when these business processes involve not only machines, but also people. Many believe, such as Mumford, that the management of change is the largest task in re‐engineering. Many people perceive re‐engineering as a threat to both their methods and their jobs. Owing to this recognition, many authors concentrate on the need to take account of the human side of re‐engineering, in particular the management of organizational change.

Maintaining and improving productivity of product design and engineering processes has been a paramount challenge for design-driven companies, which are characterised a high degree of development of products and processes in order to meet particular customer requirements. Literature on this issue is fragmented and dispersed and a concise and systematic overview is lacking. Hence, it remains unclear, which methods are applicable for design-driven companies to improve the productivity of limitedly available engineering resources (a challenge companies and nations face currently). The purpose of this paper is to develop such a systematic overview.

An unusual approach was utilised by combining the outcomes from a systematic literature review and the results of a Delphi study. From both research approaches complementary and overlapping methods for improving the productivity of product design and engineering processes could be drawn.

The unique systematic overview presents 27 methods to increase the productivity, effectiveness and efficiency of product design and engineering processes of design-driven companies. Moreover, the study finds that methods for improving effectiveness are preferred over methods for improving efficiency and that limitations with regard to the availability of resources are often not considered.

During the development of the systematic overview, a lack of empirical evidence to assess the actual impact of productivity improvement methods was discovered. This shortcoming demonstrates the need for more conceptual and empirical work in this domain. More studies are needed to test and confirm the usefulness of the proposed methods.

Nevertheless, design-driven companies, which struggle to increase the productivity of their product design and engineering processes, can systematically select improvement methods from the overview according to their impact on productivity, effectiveness and efficiency. However, companies should keep in mind, whether effectiveness of product design and engineering can really be increased without considering limitations in engineering resources.

Therefore, the systematic overview provides a valuable map of the unexplored territory of productivity improvement methods for product design and engineering for both practitioners and researchers. For the latter ones, it creates directions for empirical investigations in order to explore and to compare methods for the improvement of productivity of product design and engineering processes.

The purpose of this paper is to describe and analyze the benefits of the application of a requirements engineering framework to assist Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) development. This framework combines the technology-driven and the process-driven approaches for requirements analysis and implementation. Specific business process modeling methods enhance the framework and assist the formulation of the functional specifications of the ERP system and the management of requirements.

A case study strategy was chosen as the most appropriate method to answer the research question and test the theoretical propositions. The case study’s unit of analysis is a Greek manufacturing company and its ERP implementation project. A requirements engineering framework enhanced with business process modeling methods was applied and the results were evaluated using metrics for ERP implementation success. Data were collected using multiple sources of evidences, including interviews with various stakeholders, structured questionnaires, direct observations, vendors’ functionality papers and company’s documentation.

This study proves that the configuration of ERP’s reference models together with the adjustments of organization’s processes, provided through a structured requirements engineering framework can lead to reliable functional specifications, a smooth transition to an ERP system and, eventually, to successful ERP implementation, concerning its alignment with requirements.

A single case study is conducted in a typical manufacturing company, providing opportunities for further research in other industries, testing in parallel well-defined requirements and other success factors for ERP implementation.

The paper fulfils the identified needs for applied methodologies and frameworks for requirements engineering which can assist successful ERP implementations.

This special “Anbar Abstracts” issue of Work Study is split into six sections covering abstracts under the following headings: Operational research and statistics; Project management, method study and work measurement; Business process re‐engineering; Design of work; Performance, productivity and motivation; Stock control and supply chain management.

As construction is a project‐orientated industry, it is suggested in this paper that traditional business process re‐engineering (BPR) will only improve intra‐organisational business processes, not the inter‐organisational normally used to procure construction facilities because of the degree of process incompatibility between participating organisations. The aim of this paper is to explain why traditional BPR is not considered to be an effective method for improving the performance of projects. The paper argues that an alternative to BPR is needed and suggests that construction process re‐engineering, founded on the “new production philosophy” should be used to initiate change at a project level. Models for re‐engineering processes in construction at a company and project level are presented and discussed.