Business Process Simulation & Analysis
IYOPRO distinguishes between:
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Process Simulation & Analysis (BPS)
BPS Process Simulation & Analysis is a highly sophisticated method to analyze business processes, based on a given business scenario and to provide key performance indicators (KPI’s). Examples for such KPI’s are:
- Utilized Capacity
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The utilized capacity describes to what extent a resource (e.g. a machine, work force) is utilized or alternatively how much capacity is still available. It is determined by the ratio of the degree of utilization and the maximum capacity. A utilization of 75% is aspirational. Exceeding the KPI or falling below permanently or considerably often can be seen as an indication for possible over capacity or resource bottlenecks.
- Process Cost
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Process cost is the accumulated cost of a business process beginning with the first process step until the process end, incorporating the process result. Generally it’s the partial cost of involved resources (personnel, material cost) as well as transport cost.
- Process Cycle Time
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The process cycle times are the accumulated times of a business process beginning with the first process step until the process and. Generally we are taking execution times, transport times, holding times and changeover times into account.
- Capital Commitment
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The capital commitment KPI shows how much capital is tied up by the respective process steps. That way you can for example identify whether your process involves extensive activities at the beginning which tie up company capital.
- Efficiency
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The efficiency view shows the ratio of execution times and holding times aiming for a minimization of the holding times.
Using these KPI’s you can achieve the following goals in addition:
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Optimization of sequential and parallel process steps
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Simulation & documentation of various process scenarios (worst case - best case)
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Process step analysis
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Consideration of time, resources and costs in the process context
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Map exercises for identification of the optimal process flow
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Target-performance comparison: Do I achieve my objectives?
Why simulating BPMN 2.0 processes?
The aim of business process simulation is the improvement of process characteristics like quality, performance and/or resource utilization. Therefore ideally known processes are measured and key performance indicators are calculated. The results of the simulation experiments are presented in diagrams. By comparing the results of different process configurations, it’s easy to determine the best configuration to archive the requested target.
How to simulate BPMN 2.0 processes?
You need to enhance your models with some additional parameter information. First of all, the average duration of activities or the effective dates of events have to be assigned to the process diagram elements. For mapping the realistic variability of such parameters, pseudo-random-numbers are used, which are generated by stochastic distributions. Secondly, you ave to ensure that all exclusive and inclusive gateways have determinable conditions and/or probabilities. After entering all relevant parameters you can start the simulation experiment and afterwards analyze the results. Since simulation is based on stochastic, you need to execute various simulation experiments.
IYOPRO also offers some advanced simulation concepts:
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You can determineresource utilization and bottlenecks, if you link your processes with entities from organization diagram models.
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You can calculate activity based costing of your processes and products.
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You can use Python scripts to access simulation context data for complex computations
Content
IYOPRO Premium offers a simulation tool kit for substantial business process analysis. It has the capability of stochastic, discrete event driven simulation of processes together with the ability to analyze the dynamic behavior of business processes. It offers forecast indicators to estimate the potential run-time of processes in order to consider timescale, resources and costs to determine the optimal process by experimenting with different options.
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General Simulation Properties - Some general settings you need to execute simulation experiments
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Stochastic / Random distributions - Why and how to use stochastics. Explanation of available distributions in IYOPRO.
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Assigning Inter-arrival Times / Durations - Explains how to use events and activities in simulation experiments
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Element settings - Offers a complete list of available options for your model elements
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Gateway Decision Making - Explains how simulation chooses the next element after an exclusive or inclusive gateway
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Process Variables - Explains how to model implicit knowledge in processes, e.g. for decision making at gateways
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Resources - How to analyze resource utilization e.g. for bottleneck analysis.
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Report - How to analyze experiment results. This chapter explains the large number of provided statistics.
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Simulation Tutorial - Learn how to simulate BPMN 2.0 models step by step with a lot of example models