Eligibility of BPMN Models for Business Process Redesign

Abstract

Business process redesign (BPR) is an organizational initiative for achieving competitive multi-faceted advantages regarding business processes, in terms of cycle time, quality, cost, customer satisfaction and other critical performance metrics. In spite of the fact that BPR tools and methodologies are increasingly being adopted, process innovation efforts have proven ineffective in delivering the expected outcome. This paper investigates the eligibility of BPMN process models towards the application of redesign methods inspired by data-flow communities. In previous work, the transformation of a business process model to a directed acyclic graph (DAG) has yielded notable optimization results for determining average performance of process executions consisting of ad-hoc processes. Still, the utilization encountered drawbacks due to a lack of input specification, complexity assessment and normalization of the BPMN model and application to more generic business process cases. This paper presents an assessment mechanism that measures the eligibility of a BPMN model and its capability to be effectively transformed to a DAG and be further subjected to data-centric workflow optimization methods. The proposed mechanism evaluates the model type, complexity metrics, normalization and optimization capability of candidate process models, while at the same time allowing users to set their desired complexity thresholds. An indicative example is used to demonstrate the assessment phases and to illustrate the usability of the proposed mechanism towards the advancement and facilitation of the optimization phase. Finally, the authors review BPMN models from both an SOA-based business process design (BPD) repository and relevant literature and assess their eligibility.

Process Discovery in Business Process Management Optimization

“…Many authors focus their work on the possibility of introducing business process redesign (BPR) mechanisms [19]. For example, in Reference [5], the authors focus on the presentation of the evaluation mechanism that measures the effectiveness of the BPMN model and its ability to effectively transform it into a directed acyclic graph and to determine the average efficiency of process execution. The proposed mechanism evaluates the model type, complexity indicators, and the ability to standardize and optimize candidate process models, while at the same time allowing users to set the desired complexity thresholds.…”

“…In the literature, many different notations for process models may be found. At the first step of the analysis, Petri nets are used, especially its subclass known as WorkFlow nets (WF-nets) [3][4][5][6]13,[24][25][26]. A WF-net is a Petri net with a defined starting point for the process and a separate ending point for the process [2,4].…”

“…The presented graphs were obtained with the use of RapidMiner Studio, a popular mining tool, with the ProM extension (RapidProM). This software is an upgradeable structure that handles a large number of process mining techniques, which are prepared and distributed as extensions and plug-ins [2][3][4][5][6][7]13,25].…”

“…In recent years, an essential change in the trend of transaction processing may be observed, as follows: The traditional BPM approach has been replaced with the Case Management one with process discovery methods, which are more and more often associated with the process lifecycle. Such an approach allows the transformation of input data from event logs registered during process execution into process models [1][2][3][4][5][6]. This transformation happens without the existence of any prior information about how the intended process should look.…”

“…This transformation happens without the existence of any prior information about how the intended process should look. The built-in model usually takes the form of a graph, as follows: Petri net, BPMN (Business Process Model and Notation), EPC (Event-driven Process Chain diagram), or UML (Unified Modeling Language) activity diagram [2,3,5]. Process model validation methods consist of a comparison of an existing process model to the actual event log records.…”