Business Process Reengineering (BPR) and Thai Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs)
Sittichok Rashaniphon, Warit Sarideepan, Chisa Apichotborworn and Veeris Ammarapala
+Management Technology School, Sirindhorn International Institute of Technology,
Thammasat University, Pathum Thani, 12121, Thailand
Abstract. This paper reviews literatures about business process reengineering (BPR), its general concepts, the success and failure factors that may affect the process of BPR, in order to determine appropriate techniques to apply this concept to the Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in Thailand. Included in this paper are the reviews SMEs definition in Thailand. Unlike the large organizations with abundant resources, the Thai SMEs have to encounter many limitations in their operations such as the limitation of the budgets, the limitation of work force and the challenges from large firms.
The authors wish that this paper could stimulate the interests in BPR technique and it could be the initial step to support the BPR implementation for the SMEs in Thailand.
Keywords : Business Process Reengineering (BPR), Reengineering, Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs)
1. Introduction
In 1997, many large enterprises in Thailand were affected by the financial crisis and had to close down their businesses. To stimulate the economy with high hope to make it a more sustainable one, the Thai government, at that time set up a campaign to promote the Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) with belief that they have a lower risk and high potential to grow under the time of crisis.
According to the Ministry of Industry, Thai SMEs can be classified into three broad categories as follows:
1. Production Sector SMEs (includes agriculture processing, manufacturing and mining) 2. Service Sector SMEs
3. Trading Sector SMEs (includes wholesales and retails)
In Thailand, the Office of Small and Medium Enterprises Promotion (OSMEP), Ministry of Industry (MOI) is a government entity responsible for creating SMEs supporting policy. In the year 2007, they have distributed the SMEs supporting plan for the years 2007-2012, which reports that, in 1999, there were about 2,754,525 SMEs in Thailand or about 99.5% of all businesses. Most of the SMEs, about 40 percent, were in trading sector, while the SMEs in service sector and production sector were about 29.7% and 29.6%, respectively. They generated the revenues of 3,041 million Baht or 38.9% of the GDP and employ 8,863,334 workers or 76.6% of total employments in Thailand. Recently, from Pongvutitham (2010), SMEs have generated about 9 trillion Baht or 37.8 per cent of GDP. Pongvutitham (2010) also noted that the total number of SMEs in Thailand can be expected to reach 5 million enterprises soon.
2. SMEs Definition
Many authors have provided their own interpretations of the SMEs by using the different criteria to classify them such as sales per annual, net fixed assets, number of employees and registered capital
+ Corresponding author. Tel.: + 6625013505 to 20 Ext. 2113; fax: + 6625013505 to 20 Ext. 2101.
E-mail address: veeris@siit.tu.ac.th
2011 International Conference on Management and Service Science
IPEDR vol.8 (2011) © (2011) IACSIT Press, Singapore
(Nattapong et al, 1994; Allal, 1999). However, the Ministry of Industry in Thailand set the criteria to classify the Thai SMEs as shown in Table 1 below:
Table 1: SMEs Classifications