Business Process Redesign : A Petri - net - based approachW

In 1992, he completed his PhD thesis on Petri nets and their application to logistics. His research interests are in simulation, information systems, business process redesign, manufacturing and real-time systems. He is also working as a part-time consultant for Bakkenist Management Consultants. Kees van Hee studied Mathematics at the University of Leiden. In 1978 he completed his PhD thesis in the area of Operations Research. From 1978 till 1984 he was managing director of AKB bv in Rotterdam. Since 1984 he is a professor of Computing Science at Eindhoven University of Technology. His research interests are in formal and executable speciications for distributed (information) systems, workkow management systems and (interactive) planning systems. Since 1994 he is also a member of the board of directors of Bakkenist Management Consultants. Re-engineering business processes seems to be a necessity in order to survive and prosper in todays competitive world. To support business process re-engineering (BPR) eeorts we propose a framework based on high-level Petri nets. This framework is used to model and analyse business processes. The use of high-level Petri nets provides us with advanced analysis techniques and sophisticated software tools. To support the use of this Petri-net-based framework, we also present thè'What, how and by whom?" approach. This approach has been developed to guide the application of the framework in a BPR-setting. Thè'What, how and by whom?" approach identiies three important stages in the (re)design of a business process. By passing though these stages we obtain a complete Petri net model of the current (As-is) or proposed (To-be) situation. Whereupon Petri-net-based analysis techniques can be used to verify the correctness and estimate the performance of the (re)designed business process.