Synthesis: Fundamentals of Business Process Management

Chapter 7: Quantitative Process Analysis

Process Engineers:
Cristihan Camilo Andeotti C. 20122015231
Fernando Arroyo Bohrquez 20092015087
Anni Ziga Perea 20122015211
Andrs David Segura Garca 20122015021
ANNI
We recall that the cycle time of process is the average time it takes between
the momento the process starts and the momento it completes. The time of
each activity is indicate between brackets. When a process model or a
fragment of a model contain getaways, the cycle time is no longer the sum
of that activity cycle times. Another recurrent case worth considering is the
case where a fragment of a process may be repeated multiple times, this
situation is called rework.
The cycle time of an activity or a process can be divided into waiting time
and processing time. Waiting time is the portion of the cycle time where no
work is being done to advance the process. Processing time refers to the
time that the actors spend doing actual work.
Cycle time is directly related to two measures that play an important role
when analyzing a process, namely arrival rate and Work-In- Process(WIP).
The arrival rate of a process is the average number of new instances of the
process that are created per time unit. Meanwhile, WIP is the average
number of instances of a process that are active at a given point in time,
meaing the average number of instances that have not yet completed.
Basically what this law tells is that: WIP increases if the cycle time increases
or if the arrival rate increases. And, if the arrival rate increases and we want
to keep the WIP at current levels, the cycle time must decrease.
CAMILO
When the above mentioned parameters follow different distributions, it is
necessary to use very different tail models. A more fundamental limitation is
that they only deal with one activity at a time. When we have to analyze an
entire process involving various activities, events and resources, these basic
techniques are not enough.
Simulation is the most popular and supported technique for the quantitative
analysis of process models. The idea is that a process simulator generates a
large number of hypothetical cases of a process, executes these cases step
by step and records each step in this execution. The output of a simulator
includes simulation logs, some statistics related to cycle times, average
waiting times and the average utilization of resources
The simulation of a task proceeds as follows. When a task is ready to run, a
named work item is created and the simulator first tries to find a resource
that can be assigned by this work item. If it is not found, the simulator puts
it on hold until a suitable resource is released. Once a work item has been
assigned, the simulator determines the duration of random mode according
to the probability distribution of the task processing time.
Once the duration of a work item has been determined, the simulator places
it in idle mode for that duration. This fact simulates that the task is running.
Once the duration is finished, the work item is declared complete and the
resource becomes available. Simulators use intelligent algorithms to
complete the simulation as quickly as possible. In addition, the simulator
can find out the total amount of time a resource is busy handling work
items, as well as knowing the percentage of resource utilization during the
simulation.
The following information must be specified for each task in the process
model to simulate:
Probability distribution for the processing time of each task.
Other performance attributes for the task, such as the cost and value
added produced by the tasks.
The set of resources that are capable of performing the task, which is
often referred to as a resource group. The number of resources for this
group and other attributes of these resources, such as cost per hour, must
be specified
The landscape of simulation tools evolves continuously, so it is important to
understand the concepts of process simulation before attempting to capture
the specific characteristics of a given tool. The functionality provided varies
from one tool to another.
Some of the more sophisticated tools allow you to specify not only
branching conditions, but also real Boolean expressions that make use of
attributes associated with data objects in the process model.
Finally, process simulation tools often differ in terms of how resources and
resources are specified. Likely it is advisable to perform a sensitivity analysis
of the simulation.