Process design is done using visual methods such as ‘process mapping’. Business Process Management (BPM) takes visual results one step further and integrates additional information into the design. BPM includes not only the design and execution of chains of activities that can be fully automated, but also workflows that require human interaction or intervention.
Typical BPM activities are:
- design processes and workflows
- run processes create process instances or workflow executions
- activity tracking
During the design phase, the logical flow of information, the practices to be followed, as well as the resources, data and funds necessary to carry out the entire chain of events are visualized and described. Commercial BPM software solutions often provide a graphic design application or compositor, rather than a text-based programming approach. With such a compositor, even people with no software programming experience can become skilled process modelers by dragging components from the toolbar onto the layout, configuring the components, and linking them together using arrows, thus creating the flow of information. events. The symbols and icons used are standardized. One of the standards used is the Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) standard. In production and automation designs, this phase could also include the simulation of response times for the entire production chain or the simulation of alternative routes with the potential elimination of certain bottlenecks. Many processes cannot be fully automated as they are not 100% machine or computer oriented. These so-called person-to-person workflows require human interaction or intervention to complete.
In process execution, the BPM engines send computational instructions to the underlying independent applications or threads that are linked together, thus executing the process. However, when running person-to-person processes, the execution generates tasks that must be performed and completed by the human participants in the process. Tasks must then be manually reported as completed for the process to continue. Process design can be seen as the design of a city map where roads, traffic lights, bridges and intersections are designed on the drawing board. Process execution can be viewed as the actual execution of an instance of the designed process or as actual driving through the streets. of New York City where we are met with traffic lights that we have to stop for, skip dead ends and finally reach our destination.
Monitoring traffic gives an idea of where traffic jams or parking problems exist. Process instance monitoring, you can now view customer orders from a process perspective (for example, order received, awaiting delivery, invoice paid). This can be taken even further by including suppliers or an outsourcing partner in the process. Amazon.com recently opened up its inventory and order database to other companies through a web-based interface, allowing them to query Amazon.com’s inventory and integrate it into their own processes. Process tracking no longer stops at the company gate, but continues all the way to Amazon.com warehouses. If the chain as a whole has been made transparent, its monitoring provides us with information that was not previously available.