A human - computer interactive approach based on activity - section analysis for BPR

In any business process reengineering (BPR) project, a thorough understanding of various tasks and activities of the organization is required. Very often this idea is captured using a simple flow chart or static representation diagram. The weakness here is that the process design complexity is not adequately represented by the use of flow charts, and this allows for limited human-computer interaction during the process design and analysis. In this paper, we propose an enhanced flow chart approach; the concept of activity-section flow chart to support BPR, which is a combination of the existing activity flow chart and section flow chart. Using this approach, a human-computer interactive model for BPR is developed. This model can identify the unreasonable activity loops and excessive business rounds between sections by the adjacent and reachable matrices. Via the human-computer interaction, the process can be revised by human experience. This approach provides an efficient tool for BPR of large-scale systems. It has been applied to the material supply management system of an iron and steel works, and satisfactory results have been achieved.