Service Process Innovation: BPMN in Practice

We describe the application of the Business Process Modeling Notation to the redesign of a service management process in a truck dealership in the N.E. US. After the deployment of a new service management system did not lead to the expected efficiency gains the authors were asked to analyze the as-is service process, make suggestions for improvement, and simulate the financial impact of the proposed changes. The as-is and to-be process were documented in BPMN, and a BPMN-based simulation tool was used to quantify the effects of process improvement. As an outcome of this project we developed an initial subset of BPMN constructs that were a useful starting point for modeling in a process-unaware domain with members of the surveyed organization. We found that the deliberate modification of BPMN constructs allows for the highlighting of common process weaknesses, and we show how an analytical process model changes when it is modified to serve as a simulation models.