1. Short introduction to business process modelling
Prof. Dr.(PL) Michael Unterstein
Short introduction to business process modelling
Business process vs. traditional functional business organisation
What is a business process?
Elements of business process models
Modelling business processes with event- driven process chains (EPC)
Analysing a business process

2. 1. Business process vs. traditional functional business organisation
check order, accept / reject
how much does it cost?
how much does it cost?
deliver
confirm order
bill
acquire necessary parts
can we produce it?
customer wants to order something
are parts avalilable?
when?
produce
Organisational units (departments) are formed by concentrating specific tasks, e.g. production of goods, purchasing goods, sales.

3. Problems with functional organisation
Different tasks of a process (e.g. order fulfilment) are executed by different organisational units
Decision competencies decentralised
Workflow interrupted every time an OU changes
Coordination problems
Long completion time for processes
Orders often not completed in time

4. Process-oriented organisation
oriented to overall workflow of an order, project, etc.
single responsibility for the whole process
the structures of functional organisation are used and conserved, not destroyed
attempt to eliminate time-consuming coordination problems
Precondition
processes in an enterprise must be known
processes in an enterprise must be analysed
processes in an enterprise must be documented

5. Business process - definition
"A business process consists of a set of activities performed in coordination in an organisational and technical environment. These activities lead jointly to a business goal."
"Each business process is enacted by a single organisation, but it may interact with business processes performed by other organisations."
[Wens07]

6. Business process management
"(..) includes concepts, methods and techniques to support the design, administration, configuration, enactment and analysis of business processes."
[Wens07]
[Wikipedia]

7. Business process modelling
Diverse modelling methods and techniques
Petri nets
UML activity diagrams
event-driven process chains (EPC)
business process modelling notation (BPMN)
Methods and tools for evaluating models
animation, simulation
calculation (time, cost, resource usage, …)

8. Elements of processes Sales Process order fulfilment Production
Beginning: Customer wants a machine
Logistics
End: Machine delivered to the customer
SAP R/3
CAD
software
What ist missing?

9. Exercise
Please describe the process as text, which is executed in a shop for mobile communication if a customer (e.g. you) wants to get a new contract and a smartphone.
Use the elements described before:
Start and end of the process
Single activities to be executed
Used material and tools
Involved organization units (or employees)

10. Event-driven process chains
developed by Prof. Wilhelm-August Scheer at the Institut für Wirtschaftsinformatik at the Universität des Saarlandes in the early 1990s
first used: documentation of processes within SAP R/3
used by many companies for modelling, analysing and redesigning business processes
semiformal, easy to understand by non-experts and evaluable with the help of mathematical methods (like Petri nets)

11. Simple example
Event
Function
Flow
Connector

12. Elements of EPCs

13. Logic of Flow represented by Logical Connectors

14. Different Types of "OR"

15. Different Splits and Joins in Control Flow
Events cannot decide!

16. Example: Mortgage application
Parallel execution
Loop
“acquire more docs“ = “acquire more documents“

17. Some rules for EPCs at least one function at least one start event
at least one end event
each function is preceded and followed by an event
an event is preceded and followed by a function, except the start and end events
each event and function has, at most, one ingoing and one outgoing flow
splits and joins are realised via connectors
an OR or XOR split cannot be invoked by an event (events cannot decide anything)

18. Exercise
When an enquiry has arrived, the following 2 tasks are executed in parallel: checking production capacity and checking available stock. If production capacity is not sufficient, then send negative reply to customer. If production capacity is sufficient and the stock is sufficient, send positive reply to customer. If stock is not sufficient, send negative reply to customer.
Design an EPC.

19. Global Citizens Want to Be Mobile
Develop an EPC for the process of bike rental as described in:
Before you start, reflect which parts of the description may be modeled as process and which represent just additional informations

20. Attributes Function Event execution time (min, max, avg)
waiting time and other times
execution costs …
Event
number of activations
probability

21. What is the average completion time?
100 Instances/day
5 min
3 min
80%
20%
4 min
2 min
90%
10%
3 min

22. Expected completion time
say: max 3 loops, 3+4=7 min per loop cycle
1st term: documents are complete, but no securities (20%)
2nd term: securities available (80%), documents instantly complete (90% of rest)
3rd term: more documents to be acquired (10%)
Result can be achieved via simulation as well!

23. Tools for modelling and simulation
ARIS Express
ORYX
BFlow
ARIS Toolset
MS Visio
Bizagi Process Modeler

24. Exercise: Analyze Customer Enquiry with Respect of Execution Time
When an enquiry has arrived, the following 2 tasks are executed in parallel: checking production capacity (3 time units) and checking available stock (4 tu). If production capacity is not sufficient, then send negative reply to customer (1 tu). If production capacity is sufficient and the stock is sufficient, send positive reply to customer (2 tu). If stock is not sufficient, send negative reply to customer(1 tu).
Design an EPC.
After how many time units (minimum) can a positive reply be prepared?
How many tu does the process require when the customer is to get a positive reply?

25. Exercise: Travel agency
Customer C enters TA. Employee E enters C‘s data (3 tu). E searches for appropriate travel offers (5 tu) and presents them to C (10 tu). Now C has to decide between 3 alternatives (4 tu): (a) no journey at all
(b) wants more offers
(c) accepts the offered journey
If (a), C‘s data are deleted (1 tu), and process ends
If (b), E searches for more offers, and again C decides
If (c), contract is prepared (2 tu), and process ends
Design an EPC.
How many tu does the process last if C decides (a) after first offer?
How many tu does the process last if C decides (c) after second offer?

26. From Business Processes to IT Solutions
[MaBu10]

27. Literature and Internet sources
Wesk07 Business Process Management. Springer 2007
AAHW03 Wil M. P. van der Aalst, Arthur H. M. ter Hofstede and Mathias Weske Business process management: concepts, languages, architectures. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2003, Volume 2678/2003, 1019, DOI: / _1 Business Process Management: A Survey.
MaBu10 Dirk Maurer, Patrick Buech ARIS Solution for Enterprise Architecture Management Vom Geschäftsprozess zur Enterprise Architecture, Software AG 2010