Improving the reliability of the customer order fulfilment process in a product identification company

This paper explains how the improvement of a key business process in a manufacturing company can be interpreted in terms of reliability engineering concepts. A case study is presented to illustrate how a label manufacturer went about improving the performance of the customer order fulfilment process to satisfy demands from major customers. The activities carried out in the improvement programme can be described in terms of a simple reliability engineering framework involving the three steps of risk analysis, risk assessment and risk management being applied to the business process. The paper goes on to suggest that using a similar framework with all key business processes in an organisation could improve the overall reliability of the business.