A structural analysis of business processes for measuring the impact of reengineering

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Ho, James K. | Shrivastava, Atul

Affiliations: Information and Decision Sciences, University of Illinois at Chicago, m/c 294, 601 South Morgan, Chicago, IL 60607 USA. E-mail: JimHo@uic.edu | The Options Clearing Corporation, 440 South LaSalle Street, Chicago, IL 60605 USA

Abstract: Most efforts in business process reengineering to date are motivated by potential improvement in performance measures such as costs, quality of products or services, and cycle time for their delivery. While obviously important, these factors do not necessarily reflect any intrinsic improvement in how work is organized. This paper presents an approach to the structural analysis of business processes. The goal is to capture an inherent degree of synchronization of the various interdependent activities involved. This way, the process before and after reengineering, or alternative designs, can be compared without arbitrary scaling effects introduced by nonstructural variables. Our methodology for modeling and analysis incorporates established techniques in fuzzy logic and systems. Its application to a well-known example is used as illustration.

Keywords: business process reengineering, structural analysis of business processes, fuzzy logic and systems

DOI: 10.3233/INF-1997-8301

Journal: Informatica, vol. 8, no. 3, pp. 317-330, 1997