Re-engineering or business process redesign has become
very popular. This paper presents a clear description of
re-engineering and contrasts it with incremental change in
systems. The paper also develops a framework for comparing
two related systems. The framework is applied to a case
study of the re-engineering of the Merrill Lynch Securities
Processing System. This system features image processing,
character recognition and extensive process redesign. The
re-engineering effort has had a substantial impact on the
firm.Information Systems Working Papers Serie
