Business process analysis and change management: The role of material resource planning and discrete-event simulation

Abstract

This contribution explores the role of business process simulation to address change management projects dealing with organizational growth. In particular, we consider the adoption of new ICT applications in the context of a growing Small Medium Enterprise based in northern Italy. As income doubled in few years, managers exploited the opportunity to implement a more efficient material resource planning together with an accurate business process analysis. First, the organization was modeled by adopting standard notation BPMN 2.0. Second, data analysis explores organization details as orders arrival, duration of activities, staff working hours. Finally, discrete-event simulation of business processes offers interesting suggestions by varying incoming transactions as well as different parameters in the model. The approach clearly shows how modeling, computational simulation and scenario analysis of business processes are suitable tools to support organizational change.