Architecting business process maps

Process maps provide a high-level overview of an organization's business processes. While used for many years in different shapes and forms, there is little shared understanding of the concept and its relationship to business process architecture. In this paper, we position the concept of process map within the domain of architecture description. By 'architecting' the concept of business process map, we identify and clarify diverging views of this concept as found in the literature and set requirements for describing process maps. A meta-model for a process mapping language is produced as a result. The proposed meta-model allows investigating the suitability of EA modelling languages as a basis for defining a domain-specific language for process mapping along with the creation of a better understanding of business process architecture in relation to enterprise architecture, which can be beneficial for both BPM and EA professionals

Why is BPMN not appropriate for Process Maps?

Process map is an abstract depiction of all company’s processes and their relations. It provides an overview of how an organization operates without going into process details. It is often used as foundation for the detailed process modeling where BPMN (Business Process Model and Notation) is used for modeling the details of business processes. Regardless of BPMN’s existence, most process maps from practice have been designed with software programs not initially developed for process modeling. Thus, the question we aim to answer is: Why is BPMN not appropriate for designing process maps? To address this, we semantically map process map concepts with BPMN concepts and use the principles of the representation theory introduced by Wand and Weber (1995) to find out whether BPMN is complete and clear in terms of the process map meta-model. By this means, we were able to provide valuable implications for both research and practice

The analysis and modelling of Aurecon’s RSA Offshoring Admin and Technical Quality Process for process improvement

The following project aims to analyse and model Aurecon’s RSA Offshoring Admin and Technical Quality Process to evaluate the performance of the process and identify potential areas for improvement. Different methodologies and tools such as the process analysis and design methodology framework, process mapping, business process modelling and notation as well as simulation modelling were used during the execution of this project. To gain a better understanding of what the objectives, inputs and outputs of the process are, the Process Definition phase of the process analysis and design framework was used. To illustrate the workflow within the admin and technical quality process, process mapping and business process modelling and notation were used. Simulation modelling was then used to determine how the process may perform in certain scenarios. A specific scenario that had to be tested with the developed simulation model, was how Aurecon’s RSA telecommunication department would handle a volume increase in the number of work orders that will occur in the financial year of 2019. The overall aim of this department, specifically the offshoring team of this department, is to achieve their revenue target for 2019. However, this can only be achieved if the team can handle the volume increase that will occur in the financial year of 2019. Therefore, the specific modelling objective was to determine whether the current number of available human resources within the process would be able to handle the volume increase and if not, the objective was to identify the additional number of human resources required to handle the increase in the work order volume. Different improvements scenarios were developed and tested with the model. Recommendations were then made based on the output that was produced by the model in each of these improvement scenarios.Mini Dissertation (B Eng. (Industrial and Systems Engineering))--University of Pretoria, 2018