A More Comprehensive Approach to Enhancing Business Process Efficiency.pdf

1 A More Comprehensive Approach to Enhancing Business Process Efficiency Seung-Hyun Rhee1, Nam Wook Cho2, and Hyerim Bae3 1 Department of Industrial Engineering, Seoul National University, 151-742, Seoul, Republic of Korea shyun.rhee@ 2 Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Seoul National University of Technology, 139-743, Seoul, Republic of Korea nwcho@snut.ac.kr 3 Department of Industrial Engineering, Pusan National University, 635-709, Busan, Republic of Korea hrbae@pusan.ac.kr Abstract. Whereas Business Process Management (BPM) systematically guides employee participation in business processes, there has been little support, use or development of user-friendly functions to improve the efficiency of those processes. To enhance business process efficiency, it is necessary to provide automatic rational task allocation and work-item importance prioritization, so that task performers no longer need to be concerned with process performance. In the context of BPM, two different perspectives, the Process Engine Perspective (PEP) and the Task Performer Perspective (TPP), are considered. Accordingly, we developed a comprehensive method that considers those two perspectives, in combination rather than separately. We carried out simulation experiments to show the combinational effect of the two phases. Keywords: Business Process Management, User-Oriented Support, Process Efficiency, Theory of Constraints, Dispatching Rule 1 Introduction Companies have come to perceive the importance of the process perspective in managing intra-organizational resources and inter-organizational relationships [3][6][10][11]. The advent of BPM (Business Process Management) is enabling them to employ their processes as the main backbone of the management of their resources and, through the linking of heterogeneous processes, to enter into partnerships involving Business Process Outsourcing and MA [2][6][14].