Automating the Discovery of AS-IS Business Process Models: Probabilistic and Algorithmic Approaches.

Author List: Datta, Anindya;
Information Systems Research, 1998, Volume 9, Issue 3, Page 275-301.
In the current corporate environment, business organizations have to reengineer their processes to ensure that process performance efficiencies are increased. This goal has lead to a recent surge of work on Business Process Reengineering (BPR) and Workflow Management. While a number of excellent papers have appeared on these topics, all of this work assumes that existing (AS-IS) processes are known. However, as is also widely acknowledged, coming up with AS-IS process models is a nontrivial task, that is currently practiced in a very ad-hoc fashion. With this motivation, in this paper, we postulate a number of algorithms to discover, i.e., come up with models of, AS-IS business processes. Such methods have been implemented as tools which can automatically extract AS-IS process models. To the best of our knowledge, no such work exists in the BPR and workflow domain. We back up our theoretical work with a case study that illustrates the applicability of these methods to large real-world problems. We draw on previous work on process modeling and grammar discovery. This work is a requisite first step in any reengineering endeavor. Our methods, if adopted, have the potential to severely reduce organizational costs of process redesign.
Keywords: Workflow Management;Business Process Reengineering;AS-IS Business Process Models;Process Discovery;Algorithms
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List of Topics

#69 0.336 process business reengineering processes bpr redesign paper research suggests provide past improvements manage enable organizations regarding focal cycle creating issues
#37 0.148 intelligence business discovery framework text knowledge new existing visualization based analyzing mining genetic algorithms related techniques large proposed novel artificial
#146 0.132 work people workers environment monitoring performance organizations needs physical useful number personal balance perceptions create computer-based technological technologies investigation achievement
#167 0.102 workflow tools set paper management specification command support formal implemented scenarios associated sequence large derived taxonomies called given systematic specifications
#184 0.098 modeling models model business research paradigm components using representation extension logical set existing way aspects issues current integrated languages traditional
#289 0.060 qualitative methods quantitative approaches approach selection analysis criteria used mixed methodological aspects recent selecting combining known conclusions included article appropriateness