Work Flow Analysis

Abstract

We present a new approach to the study of work flows in organizations. Using well-known modeling paradigms and existing computer-based tools, we show how to rapidly model and analyze complex work structures to improve throughput and resource utilization. The specification of a work flow is done using IDEFO (SADT), extended with behavioral details. We have developed a program (Work Flow Analyzer) that processes the resulting model to automatically generate a Colored Petri Net (CP-net) complete with the logic for loading input files and printing reports about processing bottlenecks and idle resources. This greatly reduces the cost and time to use simulation.