Towards Process Improvement for Case Management
There are a number of methods for business process improvement that are used in practice and investigated in theory, such as Lean or Six Sigma. Most of these methods are activity based and they are aimed at optimizing the activities flow, and/or the usage
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Abstract. There are a number of methods for business process improvement that are used in practice and investigated in theory, such as Lean or Six Sigma. Most of these methods are activity based and they are aimed at optimizing the activities flow, and/or the usage of resources in the process. These methods suit well the workflow-based processes and thinking, but they are not easily adaptable to Case/Adaptive Case Management (CM/ACM) processes, the goal of improvement for which is improving the overall result from the knowledge workers cooperative work. Another distinctive feature of CM/ACM is that the process is guided not through which flow of activities to use in certain situations, but through a set of templates to use in these situations. This paper outlines a possible method of improving CM/ACM processes based on the Viable System Model (VSM). Though the usage of VSM for process improvement has been reported in the literature, it was not specifically applied to CM/ACM processes. The outline is based on the analysis of the process of organizing a series of scientific events, such as the AdaptiveCM workshop. Keywords: Business process Process improvement Viable system model VSM ACM BMP
Case management
1 Introduction Process improvement is one of the main directions in Business Process Management (BPM). The traditional aim of process improvement is optimization of process flow and usage of resources engaged in the process. This, for example, can be achieved by removing operations/activities that do not produce value for the customer or substituting activities that result in waste of resources with more economical ones, automating where possible with the help of modern technology, designing optimal process logistics to ensure that expensive resources, such as experts, or equipment have the maximum of engagement. There are a number of methods recommended for systematic process improvement, based, for example, on Lean or Six Sigma ideas. These methods, however, are adjusted to the operational/workflow view on business processes, explicitly
© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016 M. Reichert and H.A. Reijers (Eds.): BPM Workshops 2015, LNBIP 256, pp. 96–107, 2016. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-42887-1_9
Towards Process Improvement for Case Management
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dealing with operation/activities and resources needed for completing them, including, human and time resources. As we proposed in [1], Case Management (CM) and Adaptive Case Management (ACM) processes are more appropriate to describe in terms of templates/forms that guide the knowledge workers in completing their work. Such a template may incorporate a mixture of goals to be attained, information to be obtained and, possibly, actions to be undertaken for attaining these goals. The knowledge workers are to pick an appropriate template and work with it according to the situation at hand. Though a CM/ACM system may impose some restrictions on what templates can/should be picked and in which order, the knowledge workers retain considerable freedom
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