A simulation-based decision support system for business process planning

Abstract

Over the last few years, there has been wide discussion in the field of economics research with regard to the process-oriented approach. Extensive restructuring took place in practice. To improve business processes, a generally applicable, object-oriented, simulation-based decision support system abbreviated as GEPSIS has been developed. It is used to model business processes and to evaluate different process alternatives quantitatively. The aim is to determine the optimal process. Within a business process context, tasks, work flows and decisions are influenced by persons whose behavior is not deterministic. Such a behavior cannot be described adequately taking crisp approaches. For this reason, consideration of uncertainty and vagueness is of special importance. Both stochastic and linguistic types of uncertainty are considered. The vagueness of verbal formulations is modeled using linguistic variables. Several specific procedures are developed for process control. They result from specific priority rules for the object classes. Furthermore, a knowledge-based procedure comprising approximate inference is developed. In this way, rules for the sequencing of workflow objects can be modeled approximating reality. The suitability of GEPSIS and the effects of the application of different procedures to process control are demonstrated. This is achieved by considering a mail order book and record store and analyzing its actual business – e.g. the order process. The example covers some typical flow structures which can be found in many order processing situations.