Modelling and simulation techniques for business process analysis and re-engineering

Recent business developments in the light of globalization and increased competition have caused many organisations to rethink their business processes. In this evolving context, business process analysis and reengineering are key to the successful implementation of the necessary adaptive changes. This paper investigates the benefits of business process modeling and simulation as means to address the challenges of such changes. While alternative implementation scenarios can be tested and quantitatively assessed by means of simulation, suitable design of experiments techniques are needed to guide the specification of the implementation details. Following this discussion, an application case is presented to illustrate the role and the benefits of simulation in business process analysis and re-engineering. The concept of combining AI techniques based on Genetic Algorithms with simulation to iteratively guide the design of simulation experiments and progressively improve the performance of the solution is presented and discussed. A summary of the observed benefits and an overview of the remaining challenges are proposed in the conclusions.