Cypress (1994) distinguishes a first generation
of re-engineering (about 1988 to 1993) and a
second generation. In the first generation, the
objectives of corporate performance improvement
and organizational change have been met,
while taking advantage of the opportunities offered
by information technology. A second generation
of business process re-engineering is now
emerging, attacking more difficult and more intra-
organizational business processes. In agreement
with Turner, Cypress states that this second
generation of BPR will only be possible and successful
when it uses more decision-support tools
and methods. Furthermore, he stresses that modelling
tools and techniques available from Management
Science and Operations Research play a
critical role here. Gopal and Cypress (1993) give
examples of re-engineering methods for logistic
processes that include the embedding of mathematical
programming optimization, heuristics and
simulation.