Modelling and analysis of business process reengineering

Business process re-engineering (BPR) is regarded as a revolution of enterprise management. The modelling and analysing of business process is an important part of BPR. In this paper, unified modelling language (UML) and polychromatic sets (PS) theory are introduced and their advantages and disadvantages are analysed respectively. A business process integrated modelling method based on UML and PS is advanced, which contains the visual modelling module based on UML activity diagram, the mapping module from UML activity diagram to PS contour matrix model, and the system analysing and simulating module based on PS. Based on PS contour matrix model, basic concepts, path search algorithm and evaluation criterions are presented. An example of spare parts requisition and purchase is provided for application of the proposed method and its business process is modelled, analysed and re-engineered. Using this integrated modelling method with strong mathematical foundation, the business process can be represented precisely and analysed quantitatively, and the improvement opportunities can be discovered for optimising and re-engineering the business process.

This chapter reveals the roles of business process modeling (BPM) and business process reengineering (BPR) in eGovernment, thus describing the concepts of eGovernment and BPM; BPM methodologies; business process modeling notation (BPMN); the importance of BPR in government-to-citizen (G2C) e-commerce; the relationship between BPM and eGovernment-based citizen satisfaction; the application of BPR in eGovernment; and the implementation of eGovernment through BPM. eGovernment is a modern trend that is driven by the advances in BPM and BPR as well as the aspirations of citizens who place increasing demands on governments' service. By modeling business processes in eGovernment, public sector organizations can achieve improvements in transparency and reduction in costs and resource requirements, resulting in improved business performance and compliance. The chapter argues that applying BPM and BPR in eGovernment has the potential to enhance public sector performance and achieve organizational goals in public sector organizations.

Through radical redesign of business processes and systems, policies, and organizational structures, the business process reengineering (BPR) effort was initiated in the manufacturing industry to seek performance breakthroughs. This paper describes a novel approach to the BPR, which applies flexible manufacturing systems (FMSs) design and analysis technologies, such as simulation, multicriteria decision support, and artificial intelligence (AI). These technologies are integrated to design and analyze specific FMS models related to the proposed technical and managerial changes in an industrial case. First, the literature is reviewed to obtain an understanding of the BPR concept and the role of FMS design and analysis in BPR. Second, a decision-making support system is developed to illustrate how the FMS design and analysis would affect BPR. Finally, a summary of the integrated approach practice in industry and conclusions are presented. The paper shows that the key to a successful BPR approach is the identification and analysis of specific proposed models. It also demonstrates that the integrated approach enables engineers to improve the efficiency of BPR.

The chapter defines business Process Re-Engineering (BPR) from a few perspectives to make clear what it is, what it is not, and what it should be. Essentially, the classic definitions provided by Hammer and Champy, as well as Davenport, are used. The common themes encountered in re-engineered business processes are also mentioned, including the kinds of changes that occur when a company re-engineers its business processes. In order to better explain the concepts of BPR, a business process is defined in fundamental terms and distinguished from a function or department (i.e. work unit). The basic types of business processes are described, and those that are mainly focused on by companies in implementing BPR are highlighted. In addition, a general description of the entire spectrum of business processes typical to organizations, comprising both core and support activities, is provided as an overview. Specifically, the core and support processes that apply to the construction industry are defined. In the next part, the enabling role of IT in BPR is explained in relation to how it is crucial to process innovation for e-business, as well as process integration for supply chain management in the new information (or knowledge) economy. In essence, it stresses that new information and communications technologies enable instant communication and networking, and facilitate timely data-sharing and exchange, leading to the transformation of traditional organizations into those that are highly information-based. Examples of e-business and supply chain management are provided, as well as two case studies of Internet-based construction process innovation. In particular, the design and construction process is examined to identify areas for developing process models. Focusing on achieving design and construction process integration over the life cycle of a project, the requirements for change in the construction industry are highlighted. The applications of 3D/4D models are cited as examples, showing the different areas where they can be applied to derive benefits. Building Information Models (BIM) are introduced in the later part of the chapter as an approach that enables dramatic process improvement and innovation. The key concepts of BIM are covered, including research insights into the scope of BIM use, barriers to BIM use, and effects from BIM use. Process improvements as a result of adopting BIM for the purpose of data integration, systems integration, or collaborative working are discussed in both contexts of intra- and inter-organizational use. Illustrations are provided for the three different purposes. Recent developments in BIM are reviewed to present the current state of BIM implementation in the construction industry. The chapter concludes with a summary of the main points covered on BPR.

The article explores the relevance of changes in the modern business environment and the role of Business Process Reengineering (BPR) in achieving competitiveness and digital transformation in enterprises. In the context of increasing competition and market instability, the article presents arguments that changes have become a necessity for organizations, and BPR is a crucial tool for adaptation and achieving strategic goals. The article's objective is to assess the impact of BPR on efficiency improvement and successful implementation of digital transformation in contemporary organizations. The authors employed interdisciplinary research methods, including the comparative method to evaluate modern approaches to BPR in the context of digital transformation. The analysis method was used to determine the influence of BPR on the effectiveness of digital transformations. Systemic and structural analysis methods were utilized to provide an in-depth examination of the structure and components of BPR and to evaluate its impact on complex enterprise systems in the context of digital transformation. The authors emphasize the importance of integrating digital technologies into the BPR process as a means of optimizing business processes and increasing profitability. The benefits of digital transformation are highlighted, but the article also underscores that successful implementation requires careful preparation and the study of innovative approaches. Various types of enterprises that may undertake BPR, including those facing financial challenges, anticipating potential issues, and aiming to stay industry leaders, are discussed. The article explores the relationship between Business Process Reengineering and digital transformation in contemporary organizations, shedding light on BPR's role in data collection and analysis to transform outdated business processes and prepare the organization for digital transformations. The article provides insights into how both approaches can interact to help organizations prepare for successful digital transformation. Common characteristics between BPR and digital transformation are discussed, including their orientation towards innovation and the use of advanced technologies to optimize business processes. The authors emphasize the need for careful preparation and the management of the digital transformation process as a critical strategic initiative for organizations striving for innovation and competitive advantage.

E-business process management (e-BPM) entails management of e-business processes with the customer initiating the process and involves non-linear processes with strong focus on value networks leveraging collaboration and alliances, rather than just business processes within the confines of the organization (Kim & Ramkaran, 2004). E-BPM requires organizations to take a process approach to managing their e-business processes (Smith & Fingar, 2003). The advent of business process reengineering (BPR) (Davenport, 1993; Hammer & Champy, 1993) resulted in numerous organizations initiating BPR programs. While BPR aims to enhance an organization’s process capability by adopting engineering discipline, e-BPM goes a step further and targets to improve the organizational process management capability (Smith & Fingar, 2004). Organizations target end-to-end business processes that deliver maximum customer value through e-BPM (Smith & Fingar, 2003). However, by their very nature, end-to-end business processes more often than not span multiple enterprises incorporating their individual value chains (Porter, 1985; Smith & Fingar, 2003; Smith, Neal, Ferrara, & Hayden, 2002) and involve e-business processes (Kim & Ramkaran, 2004). Integrating fragments of processes across multiple functions and organizations not only involves shared activities and tasks among business and trading partners, but also the capability to integrate disparate IT systems (Kalakota & Robinson, 2003). Effective management of e-business processes depends to a great extent on the enabling information technologies. In fact, Smith and Fingar in 2003 have stated that BPM is about technology. Porter’s value chain is about end-to-end business processes needed to get from a customer order to the delivery of the final product or service (Porter, 1985). The pervasive use of technology has created a critical dependency on IT that demands for a specific focus on governance of IT (Grembergen, 2004). Explicitly or implicitly, organizations specify business activities as business processes, and without realizing these tend to be e-business processes. However, given the current business conditions and a clear understanding by organizations about the complexities of their e-business processes, management of e-business processes is taking center stage (Smith et al., 2002). In the current business scenario where e-business processes, along with information are considered key organizational assets and management of business processes a strategic capability (Kalakota & Robinson, 2003), it is imperative that organizations clearly delineate the need for relevant and pertinent information as it provides visibility and transparency. Additionally, IT being the single most important predictor of the business value of IT (Weill & Ross, 2004) drives the need to analyze and understand the implications of e-BPM on IT governance. The key objective of this article is to investigate the implications of e-BPM on IT governance through the analysis of available literature. In particular, the article argues that a direct influence of e-BPM on IT governance performance is inevitable. While the importance of both effective e-BPM and IT governance is intuitively clear, there is currently little research on elements of IT governance that get enabled by e-BPM. More importantly, there is the lack of a theoretical framework that could be used to analyze. To address this shortcoming, the article also presents an analysis framework. The analysis framework is particularly useful as it incorporates elements from prevalent IT governance frameworks. Using the analysis framework, the article then examines the implications of e-BPM on IT governance and develops research propositions. The aim of developing the propositions is to enable further investigation and research thereby contributing to IT management theory.

Malaysian construction sector in 2010 contributed five per cent to the Malaysia gross domestic product (GDP); the rate is very attractive to business investment. However this sector is considered to be responsible for high pollution level, climate changes and other environmental threats. All businesses seek to obtain local and global competitive advantages, corporate citizenship and public relation. These advantages can be achieved by improving business performance to be more people- or/and environment-friendly. This is one of the reasons for a construction company to improve its environmental management system (EMS) via Project Environmental Management. This includes the processes required to ensure that the impacts of the project execution to the surrounding environment will remain within the limits stated in the legal permits. The shortest way to improve business EMS is to manage and reengineer its process, thus improving its public image. The aim of this paper is to present literature review about characteristics, drivers, benefits, and barriers related to EMS, to Business Processes Management (BPM) and Business Processes Reengineering (BPR). This paper also suggests a Process Oriented Environmental Management System (PO-EMS) framework based on EMS of ISO14001, BPM and BPR.

Background: Financial institutions in South Africa are implementing business process re-engineering (BPR) on a regular basis because of the fast-changing industry. However, the success of these projects is low because of the lack of clearly defined roles, an unclear definition of what BPR is, the inability to link BPR projects to organisation strategies and the lack of documentation to guide BPR activities. Accordingly, there is a need to define a framework to guide the implementation of BPR projects. Objectives: The researchers embarked on this study in order to define a framework to ensure improvement of BPR in financial institutions. The framework should assist in providing guidelines when conducting BPR activities and will enable plans for BPR projects in terms of knowing which skills and roles to source for these projects. Method: A conceptual BPR framework was developed and BPR experts from financial institutions were then engaged to determine whether the framework would work. The engagements included understanding the challenges faced and how they could be combated, understanding the roles involved and determining if organisations had BPR frameworks in place. This subsequently led to a final framework being consolidated. Results: This study presents the recommended BPR framework that can be used by financial institutions to achieve success in their projects. The framework incorporates project management and change management processes and ensures alignment of BPR activities with the project phases. It also ensures that the activities are clearly stipulated and the roles performing the activities are clearly defined. It considers time management, planning aspects and effective communication within BPR projects. Conclusion: The proposed framework can be used by financial institutions to manage their re-engineering projects. This framework overcomes most of the known challenges and combines two disciplines, that is, project management and business process re-engineering.

<p>Business Process Reengineering (BPR) is an essential tool before an information system project implementation. Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) projects definitely require the standardization and fixation of business processes from customer order to shipment. Therefore, ERP implementations are well proven to be coupled with BPR, although the extend and timing of BPR with respect to ERP implementation differ. This study aims at analyzing the effects of BPR on ERP implementation success. Basing on two Turkish ERP implementations in pharmaceutical sector, a comparative study is performed. One of the ERP implementations took place after a BPR implementation, whereas the other implementation was without a prior BPR application. Both implementations have been realized with the same consultant team, the case with prior BPR implementation going live first. The results of the case study reveal that if business processes are not optimized and improved before an ERP implementation, ERP live system would face with disharmony problems of processes and processes automated by ERP. This suggests a definite precedence relationship between BPR and ERP applications</p>

Business process re‐engineering is a hot topic around management and information systems areas. However, the verdict of the new idea is not clear and reports of successful cases are not numerous. Analyses the definitions and characteristics of business process re‐engineering (BPR). Reports on a literature survey on the critical failure reasons and success factors. Recognizes that the lack of clear concepts and understanding of BPR definitions creates many problems and, therefore, compares the BPR effort with other improvement programmes such as automation, downsizing, total quality management (TQM) for a better understanding of BPR. Suggests a methodology which can be used as general guidelines for management and re‐engineers in performing BPR to enhance success for BPR efforts.

The existing Workflow Management Systems, WfMS (ACTIONTm, Xsoft InConcert, Team Ware) show some insufficient due essentially to two factors. First, the enterprises express a real need of WfMS that deal with flexible business processes. These later must adapt to the optimization of enterprises work methods and the evolution of their needs. Second, the enterprises also need of control mechanisms and modeling tools for their WfMS in order to design robust workflow models assuring an efficient and flexible processing of errors and exceptions of execution. In others words, the WfMS must deal with Workflow mining to support Business Processes Re-engineering (BPR). A BPR is a method to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of business processes. Existing propositions in the literature are rather dedicated to the process perspective mining and they neglect the discovering of organizational perspective although it is decisive for the enhancement of existing workflow or the proposing of a new Workflow. The paper addresses the workflow mining by considering the organizational perspective. By organizational perspective, we mean the organizational structures (Federation, Hierarchical, Market and so on) and interaction protocols (Contract net, Auction...) describing respectively the forms of work and the activities allocation process between actors. This paper defends the idea that organizational dimension in multi-agent system is an appropriate approach to discover this organizational perspective since it (i) provides inter-agents communication languages based on performatives which allow capturing the semantic of exchanges between actors, (ii) it introduces organizational structures to highlight the forms of work and (iii) it offers powerful interactions protocols which permit to identify the dynamic organizational structures. First, this paper proposes a Workflow log meta-model which extends the classical one. Then, it provides some algorithms to permit the discovering of the main organizational structures and interaction protocols. Third, it presents the Management process of Water distribution crisis case study to illustrate our approach. Finally, the paper describes the developed prototype, called DiscopFlow, in order to validate the proposed solution.

The most important phenomenon of 21^st century, digital transformation, depends on emerging technologies driven by industry 4.0. Every industry must adapt to the changes that this digital age has brought us in order to offer faster and improved solutions to customers. New technology adoption also changes the business process models by offering additional products and services. Therefore, companies opting to adopt industry 4.0 need to re-engineer their current processes. Existing Business Process Re-engineering (BPR) methodologies lack the important concept of industry 4.0 adoption. Also, these methodologies take ideal business processes gathered with the help of subjective information either from industry expert interviews or organization’s documentation rather than the actual processes gathered from real data. This research provides a quick summary of industry 4.0 revolution and the need of a new BPR methodology which considers the challenges that arise because of industry 4.0 adoption. The focus is given to one of the major concepts in industry 4.0, data analytics, as process mining techniques can be applied to get actual view of existing business processes through real time event log data thereby increasing the success ratio of the re-engineering process. The proposed industry 4.0 enabled BPR and optimization methodology will serve as bases for planning digital transformation and will provide an easy and effective industry 4.0 adoption plan to manufacturing companies.

Objective. This article relates to the field which studies the impact of business process reengineering on technical efficiency. The reengineering method demonstrates its impact on the selected business process, the process of knee arthroscopy surgery. The impact of business process reengineering is studied on the example of a typical Slovenian general hospital. Methods. In the first step, we demonstrate the selected business process in the existing situation, while the second step demonstrates the business process which could be reached in a potential situation. The demonstrated process is a basis for measuring the impact of business process reengineering on technical efficiency of a hospital. Results. The results obtained show that the business process reengineering increases the technical efficiency of the selected general hospital. The volume of labour input in the existing situation was higher by 67.88 %, and the value fixed assets after business process reengineering decreased by 36.25 %, while the value of material costs before business process reengineering increased by 50.9 %. Conclusion. This means that business process reengineering affects the hospital s technical efficiency, since the latter increases significantly if all the conditions of reengineering are met.

Business Process Reengineering (BPR) has arguably been the most popular and sweeping change management approach of the past decade. The widespread attention, indeed hype, surrounding BPR can, at least partly, be attributed to the fact that BPR advocates an alternative perspective on how businesses should be studied and improved. Accordingly, businesses should not be analyzed in terms of the functions in which they can be decomposed or in terms of the products they produce, but in terms of the key business processes that they perform. As opposed to the traditional functional-based or product-based decomposition of an organization, a business process is a dynamic ordering of work activities across time and place, with a beginning, an end, and clearly identified inputs and outputs. Processes are generally independent of formal organizational structure and may involve the cooperation of different functions, divisions, business units, and may even span across entire organizations. The shift from functional-based to process-based organizational design has been said to constitute a major paradigm shift in business and management science and therefore BPR has been characterized as a business revolution by its early advocates (Hammer, 1990; Davenport and Short, 1990). In order to support industry and academe with substantive literature on BPR, the International Journal of Flexible Manufacturing Systems has commissioned a series of special issues that are dedicated to Business Process Reengineering. The three issues of the series refer to the Design, Modeling, and Analysis aspects of BPR, respectively (Irani, Hlupic, and Giaglis, 2000a, 2000b, 2000c). The articles contained in this, third and final, of these issues concentrate primarily on the Analysis aspect of BPR projects.

Business Process Reengineering (BPR) is an important aspect of Business Process Management. The concept of BPR has been widely discussed in the past decade; however, it remains undetermined how prevalent the applications of Davenport, Hammer and Champy’s ideas are, especially with respect to their relevancy for actual business practice. This paper analyses which ideas of BPR actually have been implemented in practice many years after the “hype”. Based on a survey, the BPR-practices of major German enterprises listed in the German stock market are investigated. The study indicates that BPR is important in practice, although not all ideas of BPR seem to be wholly implemented. Especially the ideas of radical redesign of business processes and the process-oriented organizational structure could not be confirmed by the survey.