Business Process Mangement
Business Process
Background Knowledge
Information systems play an important role to realize these activities
Cost, time and quality are important factors and are the basis of competitive advantage
Products and services are provided through a number of activities
business process is a collection of inter-related
events, activities, and decision points that involves
a number of actors and objects, which collectively
lead to an outcome that is of value to at least one
customer.
the improvement maybe of different meanings depending on the objectives of the organization
BPM is about improving a chains of events, activities and decisions that ultimately add value to the organization
Processes & Outcomes
every process leads to one or more outcomes
positive outcomes deliver value
negative outcomes reduce value
Examples
order to cash
quote to order
procure to pay
detailed example in lecture1 slide 17
Ingredients
Activities
Events
Business objects (data)
Actors
active elements (e.g. enter sales order)
time-consuming, resource demanding
state changing
passive elements (e.g. 'sales order has been entered')
represent conditions or circumstances
atomic, instantaneous
the organizational artifacts that undergo state chamges
physical or electronic information
e.g. sales order, digital object, consulting proposal
the entities performing process activities and generating events
human & systems
e.g. financial officer, house clerk
BPM is a body of methods, techniques, and tools to identify, discover, analyze, redesign, execute, and monitor business processes in order to optimize their performance
Related Disciplines
Total Quality Management
Operations Management
Lean
Six Sigma
focus on continuously improving and sustaining the quality of products and services
TQM puts emphasis on products and services themselves, while BPM focuses on improvement of processes
applications of TQM are primarily in manufacturing while BPM more in service organizations
concerned with managing physical and technical functions of organization, particularly those relating to production and manufacturing
using probability theory, queuing theory, decision theory, decision analysis, mathematical modeling, and simulation for optimizing efficiency of operations
such techniques are also useful in context of BPM initiatives
often concerned with controlling an existing process, while BPM making changes to an existing process in order to improve it
originates from manufacturing, in particular, Toyota Production System
eliminates waste (activities that don't add value to the customer)
BPM puts more emphasis on use if information technology as a tool to improve business processes and to make them more consistent and repeatable
originates from manufacturing, in particular, from production practices at Motorola
focuses on minimization of defects (errors)
strong emphasis on measuring output of processes, especially in terms of quality
popular approach to blend lean with six sigma, leading to lean six sigma