Process analysis and reengineering

To achieve meaningful improvements of the process performance measures such as quality, speed, service, and cost, fundamental rethinking and redesign of the underlying process is required. Numerous corporations have been forced to change their processes in order to survive in a highly competitive market. To perform analysis and reengineering of processes, a structured and unified approach is required. In this paper, a framework based on the IDEF methodology, stream analysis approach, and dynamic simulation for process analysis and reengineering is presented. The stream analysis approach is used for analysis, diagnosis, and management of process changes represented with an IDEF model. To evaluate the impact of changes considered, support the process analysis, and to model performance of the proposed process, a dynamic simulation is used. This study extends the IDEF methodology by including quantitative information. The latter improves IDEF process analysis and reengineering capability, and facilitates the formulation of a dynamic simulation model. The significance of the results presented in the paper arises from the fact that many companies, e.g. Lockheed-Martin, General Motors, Rockwell International, are using IDEF for representing their processes. 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.