Redesigning business processes: a methodology based on simulation and process mining techniques

  • Authors:
  • Laura Măruşter;Nick R. T. P. van Beest

  • Affiliations:
  • University of Groningen, Department of Business and ICT, Faculty of Economics and Business, PO Box 800, 9700 AV, Groningen, The Netherlands;University of Groningen, Department of Business and ICT, Faculty of Economics and Business, PO Box 800, 9700 AV, Groningen, The Netherlands

  • Venue:
  • Knowledge and Information Systems
  • Year:
  • 2009

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Abstract

Nowadays, organizations have to adjust their business processes along with the changing environment in order to maintain a competitive advantage. Changing a part of the system to support the business process implies changing the entire system, which leads to complex redesign activities. In this paper, a bottom-up process mining and simulation-based methodology is proposed to be employed in redesign activities. The methodology starts with identifying relevant performance issues, which are used as basis for redesign. A process model is “mined” and simulated as a representation of the existing situation, followed by the simulation of the redesigned process model as prediction of the future scenario. Finally, the performance criteria of the current business process model and the redesigned business process model are compared such that the potential performance gains of the redesign can be predicted. We illustrate the methodology with three case studies from three different domains: gas industry, government institution and agriculture.