Workflow management in business processes

Workflow management in business processes

Recent advances in information technology allow for greater flexibility in designing document flows and in the allocation of tasks along the business process. With the support of information technology, many companies consolidate jobs in an effort to improve efficiency and shorten cycle time. Althou...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Walter, Zhiping Dong
Format: Dissertation
Language:English
Published: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses 01-01-1998
Subjects:
Business forms
Business process reengineering
Case studies
Consolidation
Copyright
Cost control
Critical path
Document management
Employee empowerment
Employment
Heuristic
Industrial engineering
Information Technology
Integer programming
Management
Mathematical models
Mathematical programming
Office automation
Organization theory
Productivity
Reconciliation
Research methodology
Skills
Software utilities
Specialization
Studies
Success
Systems design
Technology
Workers
Workflow software
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Summary:Recent advances in information technology allow for greater flexibility in designing document flows and in the allocation of tasks along the business process. With the support of information technology, many companies consolidate jobs in an effort to improve efficiency and shorten cycle time. Although task consolidation reduces hand-off delays, it requires changes in the structure of the business process. It may also lead to a loss of specialization. Since a typical business process contains dozens of tasks, it is not clear which should be consolidated. This dissertation presents a new methodology that helps system designers determine the optimal set of tasks for consolidation. It focuses on task consolidation as a unified technique for achieving the best task and workflow designs. The proposed methodology is designed to maintain all the information flows and precedence constraints. I model the business process workflow as a directed graph and present analytical formulations of the task-consolidation problem using mixed-integer programming. I obtain insights on optimal design for sequential and general process structures. My initial results reveal the condition under which the loss of specialization and lack of task control can undermine the benefits of reduced cycle time. I also observe that the effects of information technologies on the pattern of consolidation vary dramatically from case to case: Information technologies that support task processing will facilitate consolidation, while technologies that reduce delays will facilitate specialization. This dissertation highlights the importance of document workflow redesign when workflow management systems and electronic document management systems are adopted. Merely replacing paper documents with electronic versions will not solve all the problems associated with paper documents; workflow in the business process and the supporting documents need to be redesigned to take full advantage of these systems. I develop a profit-maximization model for studying the relationships between the structure of a process and the electronic document management systems adopted. I derive conditions under which document design can be independent from workflow design. I derive the optimal structures of processes for different types of electronic document management systems. In general, parallel processes benefit more from advanced technologies, while sequential processes benefit less.
ISBN:9780591804096
0591804093