Modelos de simulação de processos por junção de componentes

Com este artigo pretende-se abordar o papel que um repositório de componentes de simulação previamente desenvolvidos pode desempenhar em projetos de simulação de processos de negócio. Recorrendo aos conhecidos padrões workflow (workflow Patterns), resultantes da identificação de situações recorrentemente encontradas em modelos de processos organizacionais, e utilizando mecanismos específicos de componentização disponíveis em algumas ferramentas de simulação, constroem-se componentes a (re)utilizar no desenvolvimento de modelos de simulação. Como exemplo, usou-se um processo de negócio - “Reclamação de Encomendas de Clientes” - em vigor numa empresa do sector têxtil, em que um dos autores colabora

Perceptions of MBA Students on Business Process Modeling as a Learning Tool: An Empirical Investigation

Based upon a survey of 95 MBA students in a Business Process Management (BPM) course at a university in New England, this study reports the perceptions of students concerning the efficacy of process modeling as a learning tool. Depending on their majors, students were classified as (a) Information Technology (IT) majors and (b) Business majors. The fifteen variables explored in the survey were classified into three categories: (a) Process Analysis issues, (b) Course related issues, and (c) Organizational issues. Statistically significant differences are found on the value of simulation exercises as perceived by MBA students on five dimensions: (1) Analyzing Business Process Performance, (2) Modeling Business Processes, (3) High-level Process Mapping, (4) Understanding BPM Concepts, and (5) Grasping Process Control Issues. Implications of these differences for designing graduate level BPM courses in colleges of business administration are discussed in the paper. Keyword

Cognitive BPM as an Equalizer: Improving Access and Efficiency for Employees with (and without) Cognitive Disabilities

We examine ProcessGPT, an AI model designed to automate, augment, and improve business processes, to study the challenges of managing business processes within the cognitive limitations of the human workforce, particularly individuals with cognitive disabilities. ProcessGPT provides a blueprint for designing efficient business processes that take into account human cognitive limitations. By viewing this through the lens of cognitive disabilities, we show that ProcessGPT improves process usability for individuals with and without cognitive disabilities. We also demonstrate that organizations implementing ProcessGPT-like capabilities will realize increased productivity, morale, and inclusion.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figure

IT-enabled Process Innovation: A Literature Review

The importance of Information Technology (IT) is growing, and in a hypercompetitive market IT must be used as a strategic asset for companies to succeed. In order to gain strategic benefits from IT, companies need to be innovative when deploying IT. This can be achieved by reengineering business processes to take advantage of the possibilities IT provides. In 1993 Thomas H. Davenport presented a framework describing the role of IT in process innovation . Based on this framework, the purpose of this paper is to conduct a literature review to answer the following research question: What kind of opportunities does IT provide for process innovation? . Davenport\u27s framework is used as an analytical lens to review articles from the top 20 IS and management journals. The paper provides an overview and an in-depth analysis of the literature on IT-enabled process innovation and suggests avenues for future research as well as recommendations for practitioners. Our analyses reveal five distinct themes related to opportunities for IT-enabled process innovation, all of which offer guidance to practitioners and highlight gaps in our current knowledge about how to leverage IT for innovation purposes

Current and Future Issues in BPM Research: A European Perspective from the ERCIS Meeting 2010

Business process management (BPM) is a still-emerging field in the academic discipline of Information Systems (IS). This article reflects on a workshop on current and future issues in BPM research that was conducted by seventeen IS researchers from eight European countries as part of the 2010 annual meeting of the European Research Center for Information Systems (ERCIS). The results of this workshop suggest that BPM research can meaningfully contribute to investigating a broad variety of phenomena that are of interest to IS scholars, ranging from rather technical (e.g., the implementation of software architectures) to managerial (e.g., the impact of organizational culture on process performance). It further becomes noticeable that BPM researchers can make use of several research strategies, including qualitative, quantitative, and design-oriented approaches. The article offers the participants’ outlook on the future of BPM research and combines their opinions with research results from the academic literature on BPM, with the goal of contributing to establishing BPM as a distinct field of research in the IS discipline

Melhoria de processos : framework colaborativo para a implementação de modelos BPMN

Neste trabalho, são abordadas as limitações existentes relativamente à utilização única da notação BPMN, com o objetivo de modelar e introduzir melhorias nos processos. Estas limitações prendem-se, essencialmente, com a incapacidade para representar requisitos não funcionais. De modo a eliminar essas limitações, é proposto um framework que junta diagramas SIPOC, Value Stream Maps e a notação BPMN e oferece um guião ao utilizador para a sua utilização. A proposta desenvolvida permite recolher informação de um modo muito mais estruturado e organizado, apoiado no diagrama SIPOC, e permitindo uma maior perceção dos requisitos não funcionais dos processos, tais como o tempo ou número de trabalhadores numa atividade específica, graças ao VSM, algo que não é possível somente com a notação BPMN. Este framework apresenta-se enquanto uma solução única para o problema apresentado, em que são incorporados diferentes elementos neste, construindo um guião, com os passos necessários e várias sugestões para o utilizador. Deste modo é possível adaptar e implementar o framework a diferentes organizações e processos.Mestrado em Engenharia e Gestão Industria

Evaluation of automated business process optimization

Today's highly competitive markets tend to favor enterprises, in which business processes are analyzed and optimized regularly, in order to be able to operate in accordance with their business goals. The variety of business process management (BPM) methods applied for this purpose, since the emergence of the concept of business reengineering in the 1990s, ranges from incremental adjustments to radical restructuring. In combination with contemporary workflow automation technology, modern redesign methods are powerful tools for enhancing business performance, enabling companies to maintain a winning margin. Optimization methods that deliver sustainable results using evolutionary approaches, however, are nowadays becoming increasingly popular - once again, two decades after continuous improvement paradigms had almost completely been abandoned in favor of revolutionary process redesign. This diploma thesis explores one such evolutionary BPM approach employed in the deep Business Optimization Platform (dBOP), a research prototype, which assists analysts with the selection and application of suitable process improvement techniques. The present work demonstrates an evaluation of dBOP with the help of simulated business scenarios based on real case studies, and documents the types of optimization patterns most readily applied through automated process redesign. For this purpose two business processes, one from a car rental enterprise and one from a health insurance company, are modeled and deployed on a process server, and executed using web services and sample data warehouses based on actual statistics. These processes are then analyzed with dBOP, in order to compare its optimization recommendations with those expected from a human analyst's perspective

Towards an information security framework for government to government transactions : a perspective from East Africa

The need for a regional framework for information security in e-Government for the East African Community (EAC) has become more urgent with the signing in 2009 of the EAC Common Market Protocol. This protocol will entail more electronic interactions amongst government agencies in the EAC partner states which are Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda. Government to Government (G2G) transactions are the backbone of e-Government transactions. If a government wants to provide comprehensive services that are easy to use by citizens, employees or businesses, it needs to be able to combine information or services that are provided by different government agencies or departments. Furthermore, the governments must ensure that the services provided are secure so that citizens trust that an electronic transaction is as good as or better than a manual one. Thus governments in the EAC must address information security in ways that take into consideration that these governments have limited resources and skills to use for e-Government initiatives. The novel contribution of this study is an information security framework dubbed the TOG framework, comprising of technical, operational, governance, process and maturity models to address information security requirements for G2G transactions in the EAC. The framework makes reference to standards that can be adopted by the EAC while taking into consideration contextual factors which are resource, legislative and cultural constraints. The process model uses what is termed a ‘Plug and Play’ approach which provides the resource poor countries with a means of addressing information security that can be implemented as and when resources allow but eventually leading to a comprehensive framework. Thus government agencies can start implementation based on the operational and technical guidelines while waiting for governance structures to be put in place, or can specifically address governance requirements where they already exist. Conversely, governments using the same framework can take into consideration existing technologies and operations while putting governance structures in place. As a proof of concept, the proposed framework is applied to a case study of a G2G transaction in Tanzania. The framework is evaluated against critical success factors.ComputingD. Phil. (Computer Science