Modelling in the re-engineering process

Abstract

Terms like Business Process Re-engineering and Business Re-engineering have their origins in the publications of Hammer (Hammer, 199 0) and Davenport (Davenport & Short, 1990). As it is stated in (Soles, 1994), one of the key ideas of Re-engineering is to 'focus analysis on business processes across the firm with customer satisfication in view'. We define a business process as ' a set of logical ly interrelated activities within an organisation the execution of which contributes in the achievement of the business objectives '. In Re-engineering the analysis of business processes is combined with advanced information systems technology (IT). In this way, IT acts as an enabler for realizing new products which satisfy the users' needs along the lines of business process analysis results. W orkflow Management Systems are an example of systems that can be used as tools for implementing and executing business processes (White amp; Fischer, 1914). Re-engineering can start in an enterprise only if the enterprise's strategic management has realised that there is a need for change and for reformulation of the enterprise's vision. Usually the enterprise's strategic management selects the business process(es) that should be re-engineered. Re-engineering corresponds to the second process within the Business Process Management Systems (BPMS) - Framework (Karagiannis, 1994, Sep.) which considers all the activities, that have be executed while dealing with business processes, as processes themselves. The Re-engineering Process may be seen as consisting of a number of subprocesses (Karagiannis, 1994, May; Soles, 1994). Here, the Re -engineering Process is viewed as consisting of four main subprocesses (see Fig. 1, below): • Goal Definition, where the re-engineering goals are defined. • Information Acquisition, where information necessary for business process modelling, (like activities, people, roles, control etc.) as well as information needed for the Re-engineering Process (like cost, time, specific laws etc.) is collected. • Modelling which deals with the modelling of the (new) business process. • Evaluation which is concerned with the evaluation of the business process model against the re-engineering goals. Depending on the evaluation results, the subprocesses of Information Acquisition, Modelling and Evaluation may be iteratively executed until all the re-engineering goals (defined during the Goal Definition subprocess), have been reached. These four subprocesses may be differently 'instantiated', depending on the chosen methodology. For example, Hammer says that re-engineering teams should try to think as companies are starting anew. This means that, the execution of the In formation Acquisition sub process depends on whether it is executed within a 'radical re-engineering approach' (Hammer & Champy, 1993) or within an 'increment al re-engineering approach' (Davenport, 1993). Furthermore, a number of different techniques may be used for each of these subprocesses. For example, animation, simulation or statistical analysis are some of the techniques that may be used for Evaluation . The use of a specific technique is also a characteristic of the chosen methodology. The focus of this paper is on the third subprocess of the Re-engineering Process, i.e. on Modelling . This subprocess is the core of the Re-engineering Process as the goals of a re-engineering project can only be reached if the business process is analysed properly and afterwards implemented according to the constructed business process model. A general description of Modelling is given in section 2. As it can be seen in Fig. 2, Modelling may be viewed as consisting of three tasks, namely: Choose Modelling Philosophy, Choose a Modelling Formalism and Apply Formalism to the selected Business Process . In section 2 a brief description of the business process objects to be modelled is given and a number of requirements to be satisfied by business process modelling formalisms is set. The first modelling task is analysed in section 3. Business process modelling approaches are classified under two modeling paradigms, namely task-oriented paradigm and business policy-oriented paradigm. The other two modelling tasks are analysed in section 4 by describing and comparing two representative approaches of the two modelling paradigms which are applied to the same example. Finally, section 5 draws some conclusions from this work and focusses on issues which still remain open in this area and gives some suggestions for further work.