Process Discovery and Refinement of an Enterprise Management System

The need for the analysis of modern businesses is rapidly increasing as the supporting enterprise systems generate more and more data.This data can be extremely valuable for executing organizations because the data allows constant monitoring,analyzing,and improving the underlying processes,which leads to the reduction of cost and the improvement of the quality.Process mining is a useful technique for analyzing enterprise systems by using an event log that contains behaviours.This research focuses on the process discovery and refinement using real-life event log data collected from a large multinational organization that deals with coatings and paints.By investigating and analyzing their order handling pro-cesses,this study aims at learning a model that gives insight inspection of the processes and performance analysis.Furthermore,the animation is also performed for the better inspection,diagnostics,and compliance-related questions to specify the system.The configuration of the system and the conformance checking for further enhancement is also addressed in this research.To achieve the objectives,this research uses process mining techniques,i.e.process discovery in the form of formal Petri nets models with the help of process maps,and process refinement through conformance checking and enhancement.Initially,the identified executed process is reconstructed by using the process discovery techniques.Following the reconstruction,we perform a deep analysis for the underlying process to ensure the process improvement and redesigning.Finally,some recommendations are made to improve the enterprise management system processes.

PERFORMANCE-DRIVEN BUSINESS PROCESS MANAGEMENT METHODOLOGY FOR SMALL AND MEDIUM SIZED-ENTERPRISES

Based on the analysis of the common limitations of business processmanagement (BPM) methodologies and the requirements of small and medium sized-enterprises (SMEs),the importance of a 'performance construct' of BPM methodologies is identified, a six-phaseperformance-driven BPM methodology for the production and operation processes of Chinese SMEs isdeveloped. A case study on the process management of a medium-sized enterprise shows a successfulexample of running the methodology.

Analyzing and Designing Business Processes Management System Based on Transformation of Instantiated Ontology’s State

The paper discusses efforts of finding a simple and transparent method to analyze business processes and developing its management system architecture. By introducing ontology and its state, the approach tried to find a unified representation and a flexible choreography of business processes. The main idea of the paper is the transformation of ontology＇s states, which are the most important scenarios of enterprises. The business activity composition, that is, case composition based on an AI technique, Case Based Reason （CBR）, which is to solve new problems by retrieving solutions to previous problems, and then store the modified solution. The main interest in CBR relies on that it allows a system to avoid past failures and exploit past successes.

Applications of Business Process Management （BPM） in Chinese Firms： A Managerial Accounting Perspective

Based on a questionnaire survey, the aim of this paper is to explore the relationship of business process management （BPM） with managerial accounting system （MAS） and their economic performance consequences in Chinese firms. Statistical data show that more firms accept business process improvement （BPI） other than business process reengineering （BPR） and optimize their activity chains other than supply chains. Through the construction of three elements, i.e., goal-setting, monitoring, and incentive schemes, of MAS, the study finds that when implementing BPM, firms usually use accounting indexes to set goals of the effect of business processes and combine the goals with monitoring and incentive schemes. Statistical data also show that incentive schemes get the lowest usage degree compared with goal-setting and monitoring. In addition, there are differences in their managerial accounting usages for BPM among firms considering ownership, industry, and scale. The main finding of this paper is that BPM empirically brings favorable changes to firms＇ economic performance via managerial accounting in general, and via goal-setting, monitoring, and incentive schemes in particular.

Value Creation of Business Process Management （BPM） and Managerial Accounting System （MAS）： A Case Study

This paper explores the value creation of business process management （BPM） and managerial accounting system （MAS） using a case study. The findings show that BPM shortens the management chain and increases the connections among functions in the organization by right reassignment. Accounting indicators in MAS provide necessary information about business processes, which assists performance evaluation in BPM, and meanwhile, incentive schemes give enough motives, which guide employees to take actions in accordance with the organizational strategies and processes＇ goals. The information effect and motive effect of MAS increase employees＇ work satisfaction and their cooperation with each other. In the end, the integration of BPM and MAS improves the organizational economic performance, thus creating value for the organization. The results explain the reason why so much BPM fails in practice, because right assignment, performance evaluation system, and incentive schemes constitute organizational architecture, which is critical to organizational value. Additionally, the value creation of BPM and MAS depends on their coordination with the external environment, the internal situation, and the organizational strategy. From the view of managerial accounting perspective, MAS not only changes with the organization development but also facilitates the organization development.

On Computing the Suitability of Non-Human Resources for Business Process Analysis

Business process improvement is a systematic approach used by several organizations to continuously improve their quality of service.Integral to that is analyzing the current performance of each task of the process and assigning the most appropriate resources to each task.In continuation of our previous work,we categorize resources into human and non-human resources.For instance,in the healthcare domain,human resources include doctors,nurses,and other associated staff responsible for the execution of healthcare activities;whereas the non-human resources include surgical and other equipment needed for execution.In this study,we contend that the two types of resources(human and non-human)have a different impact on the process performance,so their suitability should be measured differently.However,no work has been done to evaluate the suitability of non-human resources for the tasks of a process.Consequently,it becomes difficult to identify and subsequently overcome the inefficiencies caused by the non-human resources to the task.To address this problem,we present a three-step method to compute a suitability score of non-human resources for the task.As an evaluation of the proposed method,a healthcare case study is used to illustrate the applicability of the proposed method.Furthermore,we performed a controlled experiment to evaluate the usability of the proposed method.The encouraging response shows the usefulness of the proposed method.

Competency Driven Resource Evaluation Method for Business Process Intelligence

Enterprises are continuously aiming at improving the execution of processes to achieve a competitive edge.One of the established ways of improving process performance is to assign the most appropriate resources to each task of the process.However,evaluations of business process improvement approaches have established that a method that can guide decision-makers to identify the most appropriate resources for a task of process improvement in a structured way,is missing.It is because the relationship between resources and tasks is less understood and advancement in business process intelligence is also ignored.To address this problem an integrated resource classification framework is presenting that identifies competence,suitability,and preference as the relationship of task with resources.But,only the competence relationship of human resources with a task is presented in this research as a resource competence model.Furthermore,the competency calculation method is presented as a user guider layer for business process intelligencebased resource competence evaluation.The computed capabilities serve as a basic input for choosing the most appropriate resources for each task of the process.Applicability of method is illustrated through a heathcare case study.

Artifact-centric workflow management system

Data-centric modeling approach for workflow specification and design has received considerable attention from research and development communities.An architecture for a workflow management system named EZFLOWS was outlined.Key components and research issues associated with the development of EZFLOWS were discussed.

Disaster Recovery and Reconstruction Following the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami: A Business Process Management Perspective

The Tohoku Regional Bureau(TRB) of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism(MLIT) performed various actions in response to the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami. The total disaster recovery and reconstruction period is expected to last for 10 years, of which the first five years are regarded as the concentrated reconstruction period. As of 2013, a majority of the mega projects that involved restoration actions have been completed, which indicates a more effective rate of completion compared with the MLIT projects performed in normal non-disaster situations. This short article explains the management process of the recovery and reconstruction utilized by the TRB—an interorganizational process—from a business process management(BPM) perspective and creates a simple organization construction diagram of the entire process. The study focused on the transactions and actor roles to identify their strengths. The findings indicate the utilization of different operational procedures in some parts of the process, the importance of liaison role, as well as some obstacles. The lessons learned from this analysis can assist managers and researchers in designing and managing restoration processes for future disasters.

Unraveling Iterative Control Structures from Business Processes

Iterative control structures allow the repeated execution of tasks,activities or sub-processes according to the given conditions in a process model.Iterative control structures can significantly increase the risk of triggering temporal exceptions since activities within the scope of these control structures could be repeatedly executed until a predefined condition is met.In this paper,we propose two approaches to unravel iterative control structures from process models.The first approach unravels loops based on zero-one principle.The second approach unravels loops based on branching probabilities assigned at split gateways.The proposed methods can be used to unfold structured loops,nested loops and crossing loops.Since the unfolded model does not contain any iterative control structures,it can be used for further analysis by process designers during the modeling phase.The proposed methods are implemented based on workflow graphs,and therefore they are compatible with modeling languages such as Business Process Modelling Notation(BPMN).In the experiments,the execution behavior of unfolded process models is compared against the original models based on the concept of runs.Experimental results reveal that runs generated from the original models can be correctly executed in the unfolded BPMN models that do not contain any loops.