Lecture 9 Process Redesign (2)

Sources:Business Process Reengineering – BPRhttp://www.businessprocessreengineering.org/83/Wellcomehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wellcome

• IBM Holosofx Workbench

• Used for modeling and analysis. The Holosofx Workbench is composed of the Business Modeler as the core with the UML Transformer (Modeler), Xform Designer, and XML Mapper as extensions.

• IBM Holosofx Monitor

• Used for monitoring processes in real time

• IBM Holosofx Workbench Server

• Used to share process information via the intra/Internet.

The Holosofx Workbench

Subject: Lecture 9 Process Redesign (2)

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Response:

In lecture 9, we learnt about process redesign. The focus of the lecture was the five essential aspects.

Holosofx was a privately company worked in the field of Business Process Management. It provided software product for business process re-engineering.

There are three components of the Holosofx BPM:

In the lecture, we learnt the Holosofx Workbench. It is a software which is for drawing the activity flow diagrams. Also, It exports Flow Definition Language (FDL) files to the IBM WebSphere MQ Workflow run-time environment through an offline import/export interaction process

Building Block #1 - Structural elements of business process flow

There are different elements for building the activities decision flow diagram.

e.g. The activity objects and decision objects

  Activity objects are the main factors of a business process

Decision objects are different choices in the process

Building Block #2 - Organizational resource links to business process flow

An activity requires different resources like facilities, tools and people. This block aims at allocating the resources to the activity.

Building Block #3 - Rules of graphical connection

In the process, there should be input and output. All the tasks are connected by the time line arrows. The objects are connected graphically.

Building Block #4 - Methods of conditional concatenation of process parts

There are different choices. Each choice has different paths.

Building Block #5 - Process performance measurement

Simulation analysis can be done. Time, cost and resources can be calculated for different cases.

The Use case process model

Case Study: Wellcome

Wellcome is the largest supermarket in Hong Kong. It operates many outlets in Hong Kong. There are many different types of products in Wellcome. The products are come from Mainland China and other countries. Recently, it also sells fresh vegetables, fish and meat.

Analysis of the transaction process of Wellcome

Compare the transaction process using the old cash register and that of using the new cash register.

Participants

Customers

Cashiers

Other Staff

The process of using the old cash register

It is very popular that buying some products and then getting another product freely. For example, buying two packs of lemon tea can get a can of coke freely. However, the cashier cannot just scan the barcode of the coke. The old cash register cannot detect the coke is free when the customer buys two packs of lemon tea. Therefore, managers of each branch of Wellcome supermarket have to print out a list of special products. The list included the details of the preferential products and the barcode of the products. Cashiers are required to enter the barcode if the customers buy these preferential products. This slows down the transaction process. Also, cashier may not realize the preferential products and she just scan the barcode of all the products as usual. Then, the amount will be wrong and the cashier will have to do it again. The probability of occurring errors during the transaction process is relatively high.

The process of using the new cash register

The new cash register can automatically deduct the amount of the gifts when it detect the customers has bought the specific products. The central office of Wellcome only needs to update the data to the database. In this case, cashiers can do the work more quickly and the transaction process becomes simpler than before. Besides, managers do not have to print out the list of preferential products for each cashier every day. The probability of occurring errors during the transaction process decreases.