Generic Business Process Research Articles

Hospital operations management – characterising patients’ process flows in emergency departments

PurposeThis work aims to integrate the concepts generated by a systematic literature review on patient flows in emergency departments (ED) to serve as a basis for developing a generic process model for ED.Design/methodology/approachA systematic literature review was conducted using PRISMA guidelines, considering Lean Healthcare interventions describing ED patients’ flows. The initial search found 141 articles and 18 were included in the systematic analysis. The literature analysis served as the basis for developing a generic process model for ED.FindingsED processes have been represented using different notations, such as value stream mapping and workflows. The main alternatives for starting events are arrival by ambulance or walk-in. The Manchester Triage Scale (MTS) was the most common protocol referred to in the literature. The most common end events are admission to a hospital, transfer to other facilities or admission to an ambulatory care system. The literature analysis allowed the development of a generic process model for emergency departments. Nevertheless, considering that several factors influence the process of an emergency department, such as pathologies, infrastructure, available teams and local regulations, modelling alternatives and challenges in each step of the process should be analysed according to the local context.Originality/valueA generic business process model was developed using BPMN that can be used by practitioners and researchers to reduce the effort in the initial stages of design or improvement projects. Moreover, it’s a first step toward the development of generalizable and replicable solutions for emergency departments.

Evaluation of User Satisfaction Towards WfMS Implementation in Indonesian Food Company Using Structural Equation Modeling

XYZ company implements Workflow Management System (WfMS) to make business processes more efficient. Unfortunately, current WfMS evaluation only inspects operational side, but neglects user satisfaction as critical success factor. This research refers to Poelmans's model to evaluate factors influencing employee satisfaction with WfMS by performing PLS-SEM. Results show that input quality has the most positive relationship with system quality, while perceived usefulness is determined by information and system quality. Perceived use, information quality, and system quality increase user satisfaction. Service quality and WfMS dependency had no significant effect. Since this research islimited to general business processes in manufacturing companies, future research should address deeper analysis by comparing user satisfaction among specific characteristics and different complexity level of business processes.

RegTech Solutions: Generic Business Process Analysis and Modeling

Regulatory Technology, often known as RegTech, is an innovative strategy developed in the finance industry to streamline the regulatory compliance process. RegTech takes advantage of various new technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), big data analytics (BD), cloud computing (CC), robotic process automation (RPA), and various other new technologies. RegTech can be applied to other industries where compliance with and oversight by rules are necessary. To support this, one way to be done is to analyze and model business processes for RegTech solutions in a generic style so that they can be adopted by various other fields in executing these solutions. In this research, a generic business process analysis of RegTech solutions was carried out through a literature study related to the use of RegTech in the financial industry. Next, modeling the analysis results using Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) with the support of the Bizagi application. The modeling results are then tested for validity and applied to a logical scenario related to non-financial regulatory compliance. The test results show that the business process modeling results are valid and can be used as a reference in implementing RegTech solutions outside the financial sector.

Developing and tailoring business process management methods using the situational method engineering approach

Effective business process management is one of the key tasks of every organization if it wants to compete successfully on the market and satisfy the needs of its customers. Although there are many established best practices, techniques, and more or less complex methods in business process management, no approach can fulfill a typical organization’s needs and wants. The key to success lies in developing new or adapting existing approaches for business process management to suit the unique characteristics of individual organizations and projects. This demands a solid methodological framework and a clearly defined work process. The aim of the paper is to apply situational method engineering concepts within the realm of business process management, thereby tackling the challenge mentioned above. As a result, a situational method engineering framework is defined to construct and customize business process management methods. The study proposes the conceptual foundations of the framework and a set of processes for constructing holistic and tailored methods that cover various aspects of business process management (analysis, modeling, management, etc.). The basis of the framework is represented by general method components at a higher level of abstraction, which are assembled into holistic methods via interfaces and are transformed into versions adapted to specific situations using tailoring rules. The practical applicability of the proposed framework is validated through its implementation in a project at a large manufacturing company, where it is used to develop both a general and customized business process management method.

SISTEM INFORMASI MANAJEMEN PROSES BISNIS GENERAL AFFAIRS BERBASIS WEB

Kawan Lama Sejahtera (hereinafter referred to as Kawan Lama Group) is a company founded in 1955 which was originally engaged in the field of Commercial & Industrial Equipment Supplier. Currently, the Kawan Lama Group is still expanding by opening new stores and increasing the number of employees. Of course along with this expansion will pose challenges to meet business needs. Therefore, we need a system that can meet these needs. The purpose of this application is to simplify business processes in the General Affairs division at PT. Kawan Lama Sejahtera, such as ordering uniforms, office stationery, assessing the quality of catering. The author proposes to design and manufacture a web-based system and write a thesis entitled "Web-Based General Affairs Business Process Management Information System Design at PT Kawan Lama Sejahtera Using the Laravel Framework". Making this system will use Laravel and MySQL.

The affordances of digital technologies for business processes integration

PurposeIndustry 4.0 brings new opportunities and challenges. This paper aims to focus on understanding how the affordances of digital technologies contribute to the integration of business processes in the context of Industry 4.0.Design/methodology/approachA qualitative case analysis is used to reveal the affordances of digital technologies for the integration of business processes. A manufacturing company, the producer of professional stainless-steel kitchens, which is known for the adoption of digital technologies, was selected for the research. Interviews, archival data and nonparticipant observation are the main data collection methods.FindingsThis study contributes to the general business process management field. Case analysis shows that digital technologies facilitate the integration of business processes, specifically certain affordances, such as accessing and updating, sharing and initiating.Research limitations/implicationsThis study is of a single case and therefore has some limitations. Future research should focus on the analysis of more cases for a better understanding of business process integration in the context of Industry 4.0.Practical implicationsThe results of this research will help business managers better understand the importance of the development and proper adaptation of digital technologies in an organization.Originality/valueThis research has a twofold contribution to the fields of business process management and business process integration. First, the authors reveal how digital technologies facilitate business processes management in the context of Industry 4.0; and second, the authors identify the main mechanisms through which digital technologies contribute to business process integration.

PT. Pertamina Retail: Indonesian fuel retail expansion dilemma in pandemic COVID-19

Learning outcomes Students are expected to integrate decision-making tools and frameworks to create decisions under uncertainty. Students are expected to understand the general business process of fuel retail industry. Case overview/synopsis PT. Pertamina Retail (PTPR) is a subsidiary of PT. Pertamina, an Indonesian state-owned oil and natural gas company. In the first quarter of 2020, PTPR’s sales volume decreased due to the COVID-19 pandemic’s large-scale social restrictions. Iin Febrian was just appointed as President Director in March 2020; he must formulate a survival strategy facing COVID-19 pandemic uncertainties. The case elaborates on PTPR’s decision to expand immediately or hold. Scenarios and expected values have been given to simplifying the calculation of a decision tree. The case also challenges students to think critically on providing a strategy to survive during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond using decision tree analysis and BCG Matrix or Ansoff Matrix. Complexity academic level BA level and MBA program in Decision Analysis Course or Strategic Management Course. Supplementary materials Teaching notes are available for educators only. Subject code CSS 11: Strategy.

THE PORT BUSINESS PROCESS ANALYSIS AS THE MANAGEMENT MODEL

Abstract.The research presented in this article is aimed at developing a methodology for decomposing business processes that take place in the port, into components and finding optimal approaches to their management within the port enterprises. The aims are to carry out a schematic grouping of operations and management decisions of port operators by management areas and to analyze the role of business processes in achieving enterprises commercial goals. Different approaches to structuring business processes are consi-dered, and the methodology used in this article, based on UML (Unified Modeling Language), is chosen, as it is a powerful analytical method for creating charts from different data and information sources. Based on the analysis of port operators of Ukrainian sea trade ports, a general profile of the port operator has been deve-loped, which reflects the evolution of business processes of maritime transport enterprises from one of the simplest forms to another, which is a typical modern transport enterprise.The article is devoted to the main trends in the work of Ukrainian seaports. The importance is emphasizedensuring the manageability of such a complex system as the maritime transport enterprise, and emphasizes the importance of identifying specific business processes specific to port enterprises, and highlighting the specifics of the analysis of general business processes. Based on the analysis of opportunities for growth of exports, imports and transit, it was determined that the greatest potential for further development of port operators is to expand the cargo base and attract transit cargo, so the emphasis is on building relevant business processes. The main reasons for restructuring or transformation of the business model of the enterprise are identified. The main sectors of restructuring of the port operator's business model have been identified.Keywords: port, port operator, business process, cargo turnover, transit.

Organization-driven business process configurable modeling for spatial variability

Nowadays, enterprises need to continually adjust their business processes to adapt to the changes of business environments, especially when one business needs to be deployed in different application scenarios, which is called spatial variability in this paper. In the field of BPM (Business Process Management), configurable business process models have demonstrated their effectiveness in aspects of process modeling and model reuse. Yet, we found that the existing techniques lead to complex configurable models, and are inadequate for model reuse especially for the spatial variability issue because they neglect the root impact of organizations on control flow. S-BPM (Subject-oriented Business Process Management) models provide a solid foundation for dealing with complex applications and help to bridge the gap between business and IT for process execution. In this paper, we propose an organization-driven business process configurable modeling approach for spatial variability by integrating both restriction and extension operations based on the S-BPM paradigm, in which business objects are also included. Our approach is validated with a general business process developed for the Real Estate Administration (REA) in a certain province of China. The resulting configurable modeling framework can express the heterogeneous activity sequences for one business and has the potential to generate process models for uncertain environments in a new organization structure.

The National GSBPM Glossary: Methodology and Practice

This study aims to contribute to the national statistical glossary compilation, namely a glossary supporting the Generic Statistical Business Process Model (GSBPM). The GSBPM is a standard framework that allows statistical authorities to use corporate and harmonized terminology for the statistical business process. In Ukraine, the implementation of the GSBPM in statistical practice puts forward the need for its terminological support. The glossary is a means of understanding among statisticians and contributes to professional vocabulary formation. Statistical terminology today creates an independent terminological system. The system nature of statistical language is related to the professional limits and the interdependence of phenomena within these limits. As a subsystem of the general statistical system, the GSBPM has its vocabulary. We argue a complex, non-linear, and dynamic interrelation between statistical business processes in the GSBPM. The business processes form some synergy and involve professional vocabulary for different business phases, implying a non-mechanical approach to glossary compilation. According to studied international practice, there is no single approach to statistical glossaries construction and presentation. The choice of basiс international standards is crucial to ensure the GSBPM methodology and quality. We formulated several experience-based requirements and principles for the GSBPM glossary. Identified problematic issues may be useful for further work on statistical terminology. The progress in official statistics, both international and national, significantly affects this work's qualitative aspects. An essential factor in bringing national statistical language closer to international standards is undoubtedly the dialogue between the academic community and statisticians-practitioners. The development of glossaries for the General Activity Model for Statistical Organizations (GAMSO) and the Generic Statistical Information Model (GSIM) is outlined as a prospective area of further studies.

Design of a reference architecture for developing smart warehouses in industry 4.0

Smart warehousing aims at increasing the overall service quality, productivity, and efficiency while minimizing the costs and failures. For designing the reference architecture, we apply a domain-driven architecture design approach and use the architecture design knowledge as presented in the software architecture design literature. We first provide the results of a thorough domain analysis process to smart warehouses to identify the key concerns that shape the architecture of smart warehouses. The domain model is presented using feature diagrams that show the common and variant features of smart warehouses. The domain analysis process is followed by the architecture design process, whereby we have used architecture viewpoints for modeling the reference architecture. Different businesses require different kinds of smart warehouses. Therefore, we present the generic business process model for both traditional warehouses and smart warehouses. The business modeling process is followed by the architecture design process, whereby we have used architecture viewpoints for modeling the reference architecture. Once the reference architecture is designed, a case study has been used to evaluate the proposed reference architecture. The case study has been conducted at a large warehouse in the food industry and illustrates the overall design method and presents the lessons learned.

A generic business process model for conducting microsimulation studies

Abstract Microsimulations make use of quantitative methods to analyze complex phenomena in populations. They allow modeling socioeconomic systems based on micro-level units such as individuals, households, or institutional entities. However, conducting a microsimulation study can be challenging. It often requires the choice of appropriate data sources, micro-level modeling of multivariate processes, and the sound analysis of their outcomes. These work stages have to be conducted carefully to obtain reliable results. We present a generic business process model for conducting microsimulation studies based on an international statistics process model. This simplifies the comprehensive understanding of dynamic microsimulation models. A nine-step procedure that covers all relevant work stages from data selection to output analysis is presented. Further, we address technical problems that typically occur in the process and provide sketches as well as references of solutions.

The Importance of Testing in the Early Stages of Smart Contract Development Life Cycle

The use of smart contract augurs a world without intermediaries because the code and the agreements contained therein exist across a distributed, decentralized blockchain network. In software engineering, this collaboration is usually represented by using business process models and smart contracts can be used to implement business collaborations in general and inter-organizational business processes. The validation of this contract and the assurance of its quality are critical for its right application. Early testing in smart contract definition is the fact of this paper. The paper discusses the possibility to use transformation protocols to obtain derived artefacts like test case definitions and smart contract code scaffolds. Generation of derived artefacts significantly reduces the number of defects before deploying the smart contract code in the blockchain network. Transformations protocols are created using model-based software development and modelling techniques. This approach allows to simplify and improve the management and execution of collaborative business processes. This would allow, in addition, the application of systematic mechanisms to evaluate and validate the smart contract and, particularly, the application of early testing techniques which would help to reduce the number of defects and, ultimately, the cost of the final review.

Innovation activities of Czech businesses: differences between urban and rural businesses

Innovative activities of small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs) in rural areas and in Czech economy are relatively unexplored areas. Socioeconomic and environmental contributions of SMEs activities can be gained not only by means of ecological innovative activities of rural SMEs. Rural areas are also a suitable localization strategy for obtaining public money from subsidies, as there is no great direct competition and lower costs. SMEs economic contributions are irreplaceable both for urban and rural areas. Socioeconomic impact of ecological innovations for urban and rural areas is connected with the advantages of circular economy, such as reduced energy consumption, less pollution and waste, and well-organized product recycling options after use. The hypotheses are focused on the localization of businesses into rural areas, size of enterprises introducing innovations in the market, and ecological product and processes innovations. Estimation is based on 4 innovation phases as in the case of the general innovation business process. The 2014 data set is provided by the Czech Statistical Office contains the Community Innovation Survey. The results for 2014 indicate that localization does not affect the first phases of the innovation process, and that the innovative activities increase the costs of the R&D activities.

Eligibility of BPMN Models for Business Process Redesign

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.

Logs and enterprise networks for overcoming obstacles in business processes

This paper discusses obstacle tackling in the context of business processes, in general, and social business processes, in particular. Obstacles are situations that could evolve into exceptions, if they are not efficiently and promptly (i.e., no preventive measures taken) tackled. Compared to obstacles, exceptions put a business process in a suspension mode until corrective measures are taken, which does not help ensure this process’s operation continuity. To address this lack of continuity, a two-stage approach for obstacle tackling using specialized enterprise networks is presented. The approach consists of (i) an early business-process obstacle detection technique based on logs and enterprise networks, and (ii) obstacle tackling technique based on solutions that result from network crawling. A system demonstrating the technical feasibility and efficiency of the approach through a real dataset, is presented in the paper as well.

Towards semantically-aided domain specific business process modeling

PurposeDomain-specific process modeling has been proposed in the literature as a solution to several problems in business process management. The problems arise when using only the generic Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) standard for modeling. This language includes domain ambiguity and difficult long-term model evolution. Domain-specific modeling involves developing concept definitions, domain-specific processes and eventually industry-standard BPMN models. This entails a multi-layered modeling approach, where any of these artifacts can be modified by various stakeholders and changes done by one person may influence models used by others. There is therefore a need for tool support to keep track of changes done and their potential impacts. The paper aims to discuss these issues.Design/methodology/approachThe authors use a multi-context systems-based approach to infer the impacts that changes may cause in the models; and alsothe authors incrementally map components of business process models to ontologies.FindingsAdvantages of the framework include: identifying conflicts/inconsistencies across different business modeling layers; expressing rich information on the relations between two layers; calculating the impact of changes taking place in one layer to the rest of the layers; and selecting incrementally the most appropriate semantic models on which the transformations can be based.Research limitations/implicationsThe authors consider this work as one of the foundational bricks that will enable further advances toward the governance of multi-layer business process modeling systems. Extensive usability tests would enable to further confirm the findings of the paper.Practical implicationsThe approach described here should improve the maintainability, reuse and clarity of business process models and in extension improve data governance in large organizations. The approaches described here should improve the maintainability, reuse and clarity of business process models. This can improve data governance in large organizations and for large collections of processes by aiding various stakeholders to understand problems with process evolutions, changes and inconsistencies with business goals.Originality/valueThis paper fulfills an identified gap to enabling semantically aided domain–specific process modeling.

Optimal Process Mining for Large and Complex Event Logs

This paper addresses the problem of process discovery from large and complex event logs. We depart from the existing literature and formulate the problem of optimal process discovery. A formal mathematical programming model is given based on a novel hierarchical structuration of the event logs. Desired properties of event trace score functions are described, and the properties of optimal process models are proved. A combination of Monte Carlo optimization and tabu search is proposed to overcome the complexity related to the huge size of the event logs and the combinatorial solution space. Numerical results show that our approach is suitable for large event logs and that it performs better than the state-of-the-art approaches. We also demonstrate the applicability of our method on a real case study in health care. This paper illustrates the benefits of combining techniques from the operational research and the process mining fields. Note to Practitioners —Though directly applicable to general business process discovery, this paper is motivated by our collaboration with the company HEVA (Lyon, France) and health practitioners on patient care pathway discovery. The French hospitalization database that contains hospitalization history of all patients is used for this purpose and our goal is to determine the most meaningful process model of the patient hospitalization history. The hierarchical event structure of this paper provides a natural way of representing relationship between hospitalization events and is readily obtainable from the classical ICD-10 codes. The formal mathematical model and our optimization algorithm allow the end users to best balance between the faithfulness of the process model and its complexity. A case study of cardiovascular patients is presented to show the capability of the proposed approach to clearly capture the major patient pathways before and after the implementation of defibrillators. The results of this paper are highly valuable for doctors and public health decision makers, as crucial information is provided on patient care pathways for any selected cohort.

A value-oriented approach to business process specialization: Principles, proof-of-concept, and validation

A question-based method to specialize business processes is proposed.The method relies on REA business pattern.The process specialization is automated through model transformations.Empirical studies carried out both with practitioners and graduated students.The validation suggests that the models were correct from a business point of view. Organizations build information systems to support their business processes. Precise modeling of an organizations processes is a prerequisite for building information systems that support those processes. Our goal is to help business analysts produce detailed models of the business processes that best reflect the needs of their organizations. To this end, we propose to a) leverage the best practices in terms of a kernel of generic business processes, and b) provide analysts with tools to customize those processes by generating new process variants. We use business patterns from the Resource Event Agent ontology to identify variation points, and to codify the transformations inherent in the generation of the process variants. We developed a prototype process specialization tool using the Eclipse modeling ecosystem. We tested our approach on a set of processes from the Enterprise Resource Planning literature, and a set of variation points to assess the extent to which: 1) the identified variation points made sense, and 2) whether the generated variants made sense, from a business point of view. The results showed that 94.12% of the variation points made sense, and that 80.6% of the generated process variants corresponded to what the business process management specialists expected.

Modeling Dynamic Aspects of Sensitive Business Processes for Knowledge Localization

This paper introduces BPM4KI- a generic Business Process Meta-Model for Knowledge Identification, which encompasses a clear and semantically rich definition of Sensitive Business Processes (SBPs). This meta-model is well founded on «core» domain ontologies. It covers all aspects of business process modeling and knowledge management: the functional, organizational, behavioral, informational, intentional and knowledge perspectives. The aim of BPM4KI is to develop a rich and expressive graphical representation of SBPs in order to identify and localize the crucial knowledge that is mobilized and created by these processes. In this research work, we focus more specifically on the description of the « Functional Perspective», which represents the core dimension in SBP modeling, exploring the collaboration, interaction and knowledge aspects. Besides, we evaluate the relevance of some proposed concepts through a real SBP scenario from medical domain in the context of the organization of protection of the motor disabled people of Sfax-Tunisia (ASHMS).