Enter the characters you see below
Sorry, we just need to make sure you're not a robot. For best results, please make sure your browser is accepting cookies.
Type the characters you see in this image:
Try different image
Conditions of Use Privacy Policy
© 1996-2014, Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates
What does a tailor do before making a dress? That’s right, the pattern! And what happens before the fashionable clothes end up in our closet? It’s a long process involving, among other things, the fashion show of the current season on the runways.
So a fashion collection, before it becomes mass and brings profit, goes through a modeling stage, when the developers think out the smallest nuances of cut, color, accessories, and combination of accessories. And only after the future dress is visualized on paper and in the cutting can you move on to creating a fashion collection of clothes.
Ideally, this is how any product to be launched on the market should go, and the business process for its production should be thoroughly thought out and planned. It is the case in large companies, and business process modeling has been invented for this purpose.
Today we will briefly talk about the business process modeling system which use popular free essay maker, why it is needed, and how it is applied. And we’ll start with a little historical background.
Modeling Business Processes: a Bit of History
The need to streamline manufacturing and business processes has become apparent with the development of the industry. The first business process modeling tools were aimed at visualizing all components of production, supply, sales, and everything an industrial enterprise engages in.
A pioneer in this field was the Polish engineer Karol Adamecki (1866-1933). In 1896, he presented monograms, which visualized everything happening at a given moment in a company.
Even then, in the 19th century, the language of science and business was English. Therefore, for the work to be widely known, it had to be at least released in English.
A much greater resonance was caused by the development of the British engineer Henry Gant (1861-1919). In 1910 he introduced a tape chart that allowed you to track the status of all processes in an enterprise at any given time. The development was named after its inventor – the Gantt chart. More than a hundred years have passed since then, but the Gantt chart is still relevant and allows to solve many organizational problems:
As production became more complex, so did the modeling of business processes of the enterprise. For example, PERT (Project Evaluation and Review Technique), which appeared in the 1950s, made it possible to work with many values, including uncertain and changing throughout the project.
Since then, the methodology of business process modeling has undergone some changes. In the most general terms, we can distinguish two main approaches, namely functional and object-oriented:
- The functional approach considers a function or operation as the basis, and the business process is represented as a sequence of functions.
- The object-oriented approach depicts the interaction of objects as production units without detailing operations but with a mandatory description of conditions and events on which the business process depends.
Sometimes the simulation approach or simulation modeling is distinguished as a separate approach. It involves modeling the behavior of business processes under different conditions, taking into account different internal and external influences, followed by an analysis of the dynamic characteristics of processes and resource allocation. We can say that simulation modeling includes elements of both functional and object-oriented approaches.
To date, various methods and notations of business process modeling are used, allowing you to choose the best for a particular area of activity.
Goals of Business Process Modeling
The ultimate goal of business process modeling and everything that happens in business is to increase profits. Analysis and modeling of business processes allow you to identify resources to reduce production costs, increase market capacity, increase product value to customers, and other important aspects of achieving the ultimate goal.
Why model business processes:
- To form an “outside view” and see the strengths and weaknesses of the process.
- To regulate the process, to form clear rules, conditions, and norms of the process execution.
- Establish a link between the processes and the requirements they must meet.
- Allocate responsibilities and authority between participants.
- Present process data in an easy-to-understand format.
- Optimize decision negotiation chain.
- Optimize the system of control over the implementation of decisions and the quality of the product and/or service.
- Balance inventory of raw materials and goods.
- See the prospective need for resources (material, informational, human).
- Forecast the project budget and minimize possible deviations from estimates.
- Increase the flexibility of project management.
- Ensure customer satisfaction control.
- Ensure transparency of processes for investors.
The detailed description, analysis, and modeling of business processes allow you to organize and balance everything that happens within the production cycle, sales, marketing, and planning of new products. How do we achieve these goals given the variety of today’s methods by modeling business management processes? To do so, we have to follow certain principles.
Principles of Business Process Modeling
We have already started to talk about the fact that there are different approaches to modeling the business processes of an organization and enterprise. It is hardly possible to cover everything at once. Hence, it is important to define your priorities and understand should your attention be focused on business processes properly or whether the interaction between all the constituents of the business process is much more important.
After defining the approaches, it would be easier to understand which business process design models best fit the goals. So, what principles should modeling be based on?
Top 10 business process modeling principles:
- Orientation to reference and reference models as a basis for business process description.
- The integrity of the process is described to obtain comprehensive information.
- Top-down modeling from top-level models to bottom-level models.
- Reasonable sufficiency in the description, detailing, number of objects, and links between them.
- Focus on key process parameters without distraction to minor details.
- The commensurability and proportionality of the resources (material, time, human) spent and the result obtained.
- Multiplicity is an understanding that the model should reflect the object’s properties that affect the desired performance.
- Multiplicity uses several models for a complete comprehensive representation of an object or process if one model is insufficient.
- Consistency understands that all elements included in the model should have a clear, unambiguous interpretation and not contradict one another.
- Applicability of models about the purpose of the project.
And just as a fashion collection goes from a designer’s sketch to a finished dress, modeling business processes is a voluminous, multidimensional work involving many stages.
Stages of Modeling Business Processes
So what are the stages of business process modeling for a model to be effective?
The five main stages of modeling:
- Creation of the model in the most general form “as is” with identifying the boundaries and the main components of the process, collecting all necessary information.
- Data analysis, including finding constraints, weaknesses, duplications of functions and operations, and opportunities to improve the model.
- Building a desired “as it should be” model describing the state of the process to strive for.
- Testing the model by implementing and evaluating the results.
- Improvement of the model, taking into account the nuances identified during testing.
In addition, you should allow for “free play” in case of unforeseen circumstances to quickly adjust and/or modify the model if the fundamental conditions are affecting the planned result change. How to do all this? This requires special tools.
Business Process Modeling Tools
We already started talking about tools when we did a little historical background. The Gantt chart, the flowchart, the PERT method, and various notations are all tools that allow you to represent business processes in a work-friendly way.
Now we will overview the most popular methods used in the real economy. You will see familiar names and acronyms in this review, so let’s clarify in advance that, in some cases, the method and notation may have the same name.
How Do You Avoid Mistakes in Business Process Modeling?
As we know, only those who do nothing make no mistakes, but it would be unwise to waste time on typical mistakes that have already been made before you. Most mistakes are either a lack of understanding of the business process to be modeled or poor knowledge of modeling tools.
The “Sagging” of any component leads to the fact that the model will not work correctly. If a company starts to engage in “modeling for the sake of modeling,” it also does not give the desired result of process optimization and profit. A superficial approach naturally leads to the fact that simulation does not produce the expected effect, and the model is often incomprehensible to either management or staff.
Ideally, it is better to turn to professionals who know the mathematical apparatus and modern modeling methods for such highly specialized services. It should be done at least if you have never been involved in such modeling and design and have no experience applying theoretical knowledge in practice.
However, suppose you are confident that no one knows your business better than you. In that case, trying to create a model yourself is quite possible, especially since there is already some experience avoiding typical modeling mistakes.
Top 5 recommendations on how to avoid modeling mistakes:
- Stick to the chosen method and chosen notation. Conventionally speaking, if you start building a model through BPMN or FlowChart, use one method to build one model.
- Clearly define the boundaries of the business process. No one knows better than you what should happen within the business, so it is important to avoid both too general an approach and excessive detailing of planned operations.
- Avoid “overlapping” processes. A schematic representation of business processes as a sequence of actions is required to avoid confusion and clearly understand what happens in what sequence and under what circumstances it is possible to revert to one or another action.
- Remember that all modeled processes should have a single objective. Avoid situations where any process is modeled in isolation from the overall work and overall project goals.
- Apply homogeneous detailing. Simply speaking, all descriptions, variants of representation of operations, etc., should be reduced to a “common denominator” to avoid misunderstanding and misleading interpretations.
So we’ve figured out what modeling business processes is. In capable hands, this is a very powerful tool for improving business, giving visible results in the short term.