The first part of this blog discussed business process management tools and the BPMN notation, identifying particular strengths of these tools and notation. In this second part, we will describe an example project case on business process re-engineering, called the “Buldeza’s Project”.

1.1  Why a BPR Project

The company under consideration is undergoing reorganization in its plant in Bulgaria (Pleven), focused on the improvement of management processes efficiency. The need for reorganization has been motivated not only by the company’s growth but also by a forecast concerning the support of this increase over the next years.

1.2   The Project

The project has been structured in the improvement of three principal areas: production, confection and store of raw material.  Initially, it has been setup to control the presence of the people, using an integrated system with the headquarters in Spain.

In the production area, they proceeded the improvement of the manufacturing processes, as well as a reorganization of the human resources. There was established a performance control system in the plant. After realizing this step, one proceeded to analyze the flow of confection and to establish mechanisms to increase the performance as well as the traceability of the garment inside the area.  Later, there was the setup of the logistic control integrated to BULDEZA’s central warehouse.

The system is based on a method of locations and areas management, where, since the receipt of the raw material, a total traceability exists:  the spinning is identified in the warehouse  and is  located in a specific position of the store, sorted by quality of the spinning,  the color, and dye.

1.3   Results

After finishing this project, the company has in the production area now one performance control system in plant diary, in different perspectives: machines, articles, people or section.

The Warehouse  of raw materials integrated with  the production process, so when an order of manufacture is emitted, the spinning is visualized and the system tells us the number of kilos availabe in the Warehouse and his exact position (X,Y).

For this reason, the time of search of the spinning has diminished because now this information is obtained automatically.

Definitively, nowadays the set of processes of manufacture – confection are more efficient and have allowed to optimize the resources and at the same time to increase the productivity.

 

2 Tools used

Both for the sake of managing the project and introducing improvements, it is necessary to apply modeling tools and graphical notations in directions discussed already; Fig. 5 and Fig. 6 are just illustrating this.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 5: Tools used (Take Order)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 6: Tools used (Vacation Request)

As can be seen from the figures above, the tools have potential for supporting the management with regard to possible (re-) design of business processes, simulating them, and visualizing their execution.

 

3. Conclusions

Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) is a graphical representation for specifying business processes in a business process model. BPMN was developed by Business Process Management Initiative (BPMI), and is currently maintained by the Object Management Group since the two organizations merged in 2005.

On the other hand, there are business process modeling tools available on the market, based on BPMN, that could be helpful in realizing process generation using an easy and understandable process map. These tools can be grouped by functions such as: modeling, documentation, simulation and execution (in essence, BPM tools take graphical process descriptions as input). A process is composed of activities that are connected with transitions. Processes represent an execution flow.

The graphical diagram of a process is used as the basis for the communication between non-technical users and developers. This all makes BPM tools and the BPMN notation useful at the management level of companies, as a way for mastering complexity and leading businesses properly.