=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=None
|storemode=property
|title=The PrICE Tool Kit: Tool Support for Process Improvement
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-615/paper18.pdf
|volume=Vol-615
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/bpm/NetjesRA10
}}
==The PrICE Tool Kit: Tool Support for Process Improvement==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-615/paper18.pdf
The PrICE Tool Kit: Tool Support for Process
Improvement
Mariska Netjes, Hajo A. Reijers, Wil M.P. van der Aalst
Eindhoven University of Technology,
P.O. Box 513, NL-5600 MB, Eindhoven, The Netherlands
{m.netjes,h.a.reijers,w.m.p.v.d.aalst}@tue.nl
1 The PrICE Approach
Process improvement is an important means to obtain competitive advantage
and improve customer satisfaction. The PrICE tool kit provides support for pro-
cess improvement and has been developed to show the feasibility of the PrICE
approach. The approach for Process Improvement by Creating and Evaluating
process alternatives (in short: the PrICE approach) describes the concrete steps
that have to be taken to get from the as-is process to the to-be process. A com-
mon view on process improvement roughly distinguishes four phases: (1) framing
the process of interest, (2) understanding the current (as-is) process, (3) design-
ing the new (to-be) process, and (4) implementing the new process [15]. Many
approaches and methods for process improvement are used in practice, but most
of these do not address the concrete design of an improved process. The PrICE
approach supports phase (3) of a process improvement project: designing the
to-be process [15].
The as-is model, the input of the approach, is the result of phase (2) of a
process improvement project: understanding the as-is process [15]. The as-is
model should contain information on the control flow, the data, the resources
and the performance of the process. The PrICE approach consists of four steps:
1 Find applicable redesign operations: a redesign operation supports a
particular type of redesign creation. Applicable operations can be found with
process measures or process mining. Process measures provide a global view
on the characteristics of the process and their values may reveal weaknesses in
the process [5]. Process mining provides a powerful means to find bottlenecks
and other redesign opportunities in the process [1, 2].
2 Select suitable process parts: specific parts of the process model that
can be redesigned with one or more of the applicable redesign operations
are identified. Process mining can also be used to support this step of the
approach. In addition, requirements are set on the process parts that can be
selected for redesign to be able to create correct alternative models. The user
is guided in the selection of such process parts.
3 Create alternative models: the applicable redesign operations are per-
formed on selected process parts, thus, creating alternative process models.
A formal foundation for the creation of process alternatives is developed to
ensure the correctness and to provide a base for the implementation of the
tool kit. This formal foundation has been published in [6].
4 Evaluate performance of alternatives: the created alternative models are
simulated to predict their expected performance. By comparing the simulation
results, a quantitatively supported choice for the best alternative model can be
made. A simulation plan has been published in [4]. The developed tool support
enables simulation in batch, i.e., the simulation of any number of alternatives
without user interaction.
The output of the approach is a model of the to-be process which is selected from
the alternative models based on the performance evaluation. This to-be process
is the input for phase (4) of a process improvement project: implementing the
new process [15].
2 Relevance
Current redesign practice is performed in a highly participative fashion where
management consultants encourage business professionals within a workshop set-
ting to think of one or more alternatives for the as-is process. The role of the
external consultants is to moderate the workshop, to stimulate people to aban-
don the traditional beliefs they may have about the process in question and to
mobilize support for the upcoming changes. Sharp and McDermott, for instance,
describe the lack of methodological support for this practice as follows: “How to
get from the as-is to the to-be [in a BPR project] isn’t explained, so we conclude
that during the break, the famous ATAMO procedure is invoked – And Then, A
Miracle Occurs” [15]. The consequence of this lack of support is that the design
of the to-be process becomes a subjective and non-repeatable act resulting in
abstract process designs without an accurate estimate of the expected gains. Be-
cause the same steps are followed in our approach that are present in the current
practice of process redesign, it seems viable to support the interaction between
business professionals with the PrICE approach and tool kit. The application
scenario we envision is that in a workshop a set of attractive redesign alterna-
tives is created with support of the PrICE tool kit. The creation of alternative
models is a highly interactive activity. A process model can never capture all
information that is relevant for process redesign. The user is involved to ensure
that the alternative models are feasible. The tool automates the parts that do
not need user interaction and supports the user in creating alternative models
in a systematic manner. During a break or afterwards, all or a selection of these
alternative designs are simulated in batch, i.e., without further user interaction.
Business Process Management (BPM) systems provide a broad range of facil-
ities to enact and manage operational business processes. Ideally, these systems
should provide support for the complete BPM life-cycle: (re)design, configura-
tion, execution, control, and diagnosis of processes. However, based on an exten-
sive evaluation of the FileNet P8 BPM Suite, we have show in [1] that existing
BPM tools are unable to support the full life-cycle. Especially the diagnosis and
the (re)design phases are not sufficiently supported. Diagnostic support is lacking
for the search for weaknesses in the process and the generation of improvement
suggestions. Furthermore, in the design phase, the creation of the redesign alter-
natives is not supported. The PrICE approach provides an integrated approach
for the diagnosis and the design of business processes. The first two steps of the
PrICE approach provide support for the diagnosis phase while all steps support
the redesign part of the design phase [1].
3 Main Features
The main features of the PrICE tool kit are 1) the use of process mining to find
redesign opportunities, 2) the user guidance in the selection of process parts, 3)
the creation of process alternatives, 4) the construction of the process alterna-
tives tree, and 5) the evaluation of the alternatives with simulation. Figure 1
depicts a screenshot of the user interface of the tool kit. The lower part displays
Fig. 1. A process part that is selected for the application of the compose operation
the process model for which an alternative will be created and provides the op-
tions to create a process alternative. After the selection of a redesign operation,
a process part for redesign is selected by the user by clicking on the tasks in
the process model. Colors are used to guide the user and show which tasks may
be added to the current selection to form a process part (see Figure 1 for an
illustration). This way, it is ensured that the input for the creation of a process
alternative is such that a correct alternative model can be created. The upper
part of Figure 1 shows the process alternatives tree. The selected node in the tree
corresponds to the model that is displayed in the lower part. After the creation
of an alternative model, the tree is updated with a new node representing this
alternative. The upper part of the user interface also provides the options for
the evaluation of the alternatives in the tree. One can select a subset of nodes
for simulation or simulate the complete tree. A simulation study is performed
in batch, i.e., all selected models are simulated without user interaction. After-
wards, the simulation results are displayed on the tree nodes. In addition, colors
are used to guide the user in finding the best performing alternative(s).
4 Architecture
The PrICE tool kit is implemented as part of the Process Mining (ProM) frame-
work [9]. In ProM, a generic process format, called high-level (HL) model, is
available to specify the control flow, data, resource and performance perspec-
tives. Several modeling languages can be used to model such a HL model. Protos
[7] is one of these languages. We implemented a HL model for a Protos model,
which is called a HL Protos model. The use of one of the many mining plugins is
another possible means to obtain a process model and process information. The
discovery of a complete simulation model from an event log [13] is an example
of this. Such a simulation model is implemented as a HL PetriNet model. We
use Figure 2 to sketch the technical infrastructure of the tool kit. At the top left
ProM Object pool View / Edit
User interface
1 High-level
Protos 2 Information
Protos XML models
Protos XML import
export files HL HLProtos
Protos 3 To
models HLPetriNet
HL Visualizations
PetriNet 4 Redesign
models
Analysis
5
CPN
models
CPN
Export 7
6
Simulation
engine
Access/CPN
Fig. 2. Tool kit architecture
side of Figure 2, indicated with (1), a Protos model is imported to the object
pool in ProM and converted to the HL format (see (2) in Figure 2). HL models
are displayed by the Edit / View High-level Information plugin [13]. Then, the
control flow of the HL Protos model is converted to a Petri net, thus creating
a HL PetriNet model (see (3) in Figure 2). The functionality for the creation
and evaluation of alternative models is implemented with the Redesign Analysis
plugin (see (4) in Figure 2). For the evaluation of the performance of alternative
models we use Colored Petri nets (CPNs). The collection of alternative models
is converted to CPN models with the CPN Export [12] and analyzed using CPN
tools [3] (see (5) in Figure 2). CPN Tools provides support for the modeling and
simulation of business processes. A simulation engine for the automatic simula-
tion of multiple CPN models is used for performance evaluation (see (6) in Figure
2). We built the simulation engine on the Access/CPN framework [16]. The sim-
ulation results are returned to the Redesign Analysis plugin (see (7) in Figure 2).
The PrICE tool kit has been developed as a research prototype. It has been
implemented on top of the ProM framework [9] which supports among others
process mining techniques [2], the storage and reuse of objects and the conversion
of models. Furthermore, it is open source, making it easy to plug in new pieces of
functionality. This allowed us to implement a rather mature prototype in terms
of interoperability between the PrICE tool kit and other tools, user interface and
supported modeling languages. The tool is freely available for download since
mid 2009, but we are not aware of any use of it by others to support process
improvement. So far, we tested the PrICE tool kit with a number of processes.
We also tested whether it is feasible to create realistic redesign alternatives with
the PrICE tool kit. For this test, we used a redesign project that is described
in [11]. The project describes a real life business process that is executed at a
mental healthcare institute and the creation of seven possible alternatives for
the original process. We succeeded in reproducing five of these alternatives. This
outcome gives a first indication that the PrICE tool kit is useful in supporting
process redesign projects in practice. Currently, we are working together with
Pallas Athena [7] to evaluate the approach and tool kit in real business settings.
5 Links
The PrICE tool kit is made available through download and through the SHARE
system [14]. A download of the tool kit can be performed from [8] which provides
the latest internal version of ProM 5. Additional information can be found on
[10]. With the SHARE system, an environment to test and play with the tool
kit is provided. The environment includes the tool, a tutorial, a screencast and
several input models for the tool. The environment can be accessed from [10]
after registration.
Acknowledgement
This research is supported by the Technology Foundation STW, applied sci-
ence division of NWO and the technology programme of the Dutch Ministry of
Economic Affairs.
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