A simulation-based decision support system for business process planning

Over the last few years, there has been wide discussion in the 5eld of economics research with regard to the process-oriented approach. Extensive restructuring took place in practice. To improve business processes, a generally applicable, object-oriented, simulation-based decision support system abbreviated as GEPSIS has been developed. It is used to model business processes and to evaluate diows and decisions are in>uenced by persons whose behavior is not deterministic. Such a behavior cannot be described adequately taking crisp approaches. For this reason, consideration of uncertainty and vagueness is of special importance. Both stochastic and linguistic types of uncertainty are considered. The vagueness of verbal formulations is modeled using linguistic variables. Several speci5c procedures are developed for process control. They result from speci5c priority rules for the object classes. Furthermore, a knowledge-based procedure comprising approximate inference is developed. In this way, rules for the sequencing of work>ow objects can be modeled approximating reality. The suitability of GEPSIS and the eow structures which can be found in many order processing situations. c © 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.