Business Process Enterprise Model - Operations Research for Managing Business Process Communication and Performance

Abstract

This paper presents a computational model of a generic enterprise (BPEM, which stands for Business Process Enterprise Model), based upon the core concept of business process. BPEM may be seen as a bridge between two worlds of “Enterprise Models”, the world of mathematical models, formal and fully operational for optimization purposes and the world of conceptual models (boxes & arrows type) for management science, for reasoning and communicating about what a company is. Our model was built as the minimal and most elegant model that is detailed enough to investigate difficult management science issues such as the influence of hierarchical organization on performance, the optimal usage of various communication channels or the benefits of lean-management-style control of processes. BPEM is organized around four concepts: business processes, capabilities that encapsulate resource management, hierarchical and transverse management organization, as well as information flows that are required to run business