AUTOMATING A DESIGN METHODOLOGY FOR REUSABLE BUSINESS PROCESS COMPONENTS THROUGH A GENETIC ALGORITHM

Abstract

A Business Process Model (BPM) describes a large system of activities that altogether perform a business function. As a particular business function may be required among business processes of the same or different business domains, its corresponding BPM can be reused. Adopting an existing principle of business component fabrication, this paper discusses a methodology for fabricating reusable business process components. The methodology follows the proposed Business Process Component Design (BupCod) model which, based on the BPM of a business, derives business process components by decomposing the BPM into smaller partitions for use in modeling other business processes. The partitioning into business process components is based on five characteristics of component structure (i.e. inter-component coupling, intra-component cohesion, number of components, component size, and complexity) and considers five managerial goals in component fabrication (i.e. cost effectiveness, ease of assembly, customization, reusability, and maintainability). A genetic algorithm is used to automate the design and recommend to a business process component designer the partitioning that optimally achieves the required managerial goals. A design example is given through the process of opening an Internet trading account with a financial securities company in Thailand. The evaluation of the methodology and its automation, based on experiments and feedback from the industry, obtains positive results.