Architecting and designing > Generic enterprise architecture frameworks > Process Charts > Types of diagrams used for Business Process Modeling > Process Charts > Elementary Business Processes
  
Elementary Business Processes
The Elementary Business Process represents the most elemental level business process in an organization.
Diagrams that show Elementary Business Processes
The Elementary Business Process is modeled in a number of different diagrams:
You can model the flow of business processes in the Process Charts or the Process Map diagrams.
You can model the Functions that the business processes report to: see Functional hierarchy diagrams in Business Process Modeling.
You can model the Process Threads that business processes are contained in: see Process Decomposition diagrams in Business Process Modeling.
Elementary Business Process properties
Much information is captured about an elementary business process. In general, you try to measure the performance of your processes in terms efficiency, time (Cycle Times), cost (Activity Based Costing, Cost Breakdowns, Unit Costs, Quality Costs), and how they compare to ideal processes (Best Practice Summary). You also aim to get a handle on what the processes do (relationship to functions), who performs them (relationship to Organizational Units and Roles through swimlanes and cross-reference matrices), the technology used to implement them, and where they are implemented (location).
EBP: related definitions and summaries
In the Related Definitions tab of an elementary business process definition, you can view what other definitions have been established as related to the elementary business process. For example, you could view what data (entities) the business process works on (creates, reads, updates, or deletes, say), what applications it is used by, and where (location) the business process is performed.
All related definition listings are read-only; they can only be entered through the applicable matrices of the Matrix Editor. The Related Definitions properties of an EBP are:
Applications: The relationship between what elementary business process is performed by what application is established using the Elem Bus Process to Application matrix. The matrix is opened by selecting View, Matrix Browser, selecting the Business Enterprise tab, and double-clicking on the Elem Bus Process to Application matrix.
Locations: The relationship between what elementary business process is performed at what location is established using the Elem Bus Process to Location matrix. The matrix is opened by selecting View, Matrix Browser, selecting the Business Enterprise tab, and double-clicking on the Elem Bus Process to Location matrix.
Technology: The relationship between what elementary business process is performed by what technology is established using the Elem Bus Process to Technology matrix. The matrix is opened by selecting View, Matrix Browser, selecting the Business Enterprise tab, and double-clicking on the Elem Bus Process to Technology matrix.
Reference Data: the relationship between each elementary business process and the data that it acts on is established using the Elem Bus Process to Entity matrix. The matrix is opened by selecting View, Matrix Browser, selecting the Data tab, and double-clicking on the Elem Bus Process to Entity matrix.
Best Practice
You can define a Best Practice definition.
Performance Measures
Performance measures enable you to measure your business process against best practices performed by benchmark companies in your field or other fields.
For each performance measurement of your business, you can define your own performance, and list Benchmark Companies you want to compare yourself to.
Benchmark Companies
Benchmark Performance
Performance Gap
Process Enablers
Process Performance Summary
Process Performance is used to analyze the performance and value of the elementary business processes in your organization. Value is generally a function of time, cost, quality, and quantity. The primary focus is to identify opportunities for improvement and leverage points where the greatest impact can be achieved.
Process Performance information is modeled for the Elementary Business Processes contained within Process Chart (or alternatively, Process Map) diagrams. Process Performance Summary these tabs in the Elementary Business Processes definition:
Performance Summary tab
Cycle Time Properties
Unit Cost properties
Quality Cost properties
You can run a Process Performance Summary report to output much of the information established in this section. The report is provided as part of System Architect’s Word Reporting system. Select Reports, Word Reports, Business Enterprise Reports, and in the Business Enterprise Report Generator dialog in Microsoft Word, select the Business Process tab, and select Business Process Performance.
Performance Summary tab
Within the Performance Summary tab, you enter information concerning the Process Thread that the Elementary Business Process is contained in.
Event/Key Input: Select the key Events in Process Charts that causes the EBP’s Process Thread to be performed.
Result/Key Output: List the key results of the Process Thread. Every Process Thread has one primary result and zero or more secondary results.
Volume: Volume is described in terms of the input events and output results listed above. You list the Average Volume and the Peak Volume of the Input Events and the Output Results. A text field is provided for both Volume properties – you can type in any measurement unit (in other words, 10/hr, 50/day, 200/week, 5000/month, and so on).
Cycle Time Properties
As part of the elementary business processes in your models, you establish actual processing time and cycle time for each.
Processing Time
Enter the Minimum, Average, and Maximum, and processing time for the elementary business process. System Architect provides a text field to hold this information, so that you can type in the unit of measure – for example, the elementary business process Enter Order might have a Minimum Process Time of 2 hrs, a Maximum Process Time of 4 hrs, and an Average Process Time of 3 hrs.
Cycle Time
Cycle time is the elapsed time per transaction, or event. Enter the Minimum, Average, and Maximum,time to cycle through the process – this includes actual processing time (see above) and additional time consumed by movement and waiting. System Architect provides a text field to hold this information, so that you can type in the unit of measure – for example, the elementary business process Enter Order might have a Minimum Cycle Time of 2 hrs, a Maximum Cycle Time of 8 hrs, and an Average Cycle Time of 6 hrs.
Customizing Cycle Time
The default Processing Time is specified as integers. You can customize the USRPROPS.TXT file to change the Minimum, Average, and Maximum fields to contain decimal numbers. You do this by changing the field type from numeric to text, as illustrated in the example below:
DEFINITION "Elementary Business Process" { CHAPTER "Cycle Time" Group "Processing Time (hours)" { LAYOUT { COLS 3 TAB ALIGN OVER } Property "Minimum Processing Time" { Edit Text LENGTH 10 LABEL "Minimum" } Property "Average Processing Time" { Edit Text LENGTH 10 LABEL "Average" } Property "Maximum Processing Time" { Edit Text LENGTH 10 LABEL "Maximum" } }
You can find more information in the Extensibility Guide, which is available on the UNICOM Systems, Inc. website.
See also
Introduction to extending metamodel with USRPROPS
Cost Breakdown
You can break down the cost of each elementary business process into meaningful categories, such as Transaction Costs and Capital Costs.
A typical cost breakdown workproduct is to compute the total cost per elementary business process by adding all of its Transaction and Capital Costs. You can then compute total costs for the Process Thread that is composed of a group of elementary business processes (and also compute costs for the Process Thread by breakdown – labor, materials, and capital).
The default unit of measure for the costs is dollars ($). A text field is provided so that you can type in any measurement unit (that is, 1000 lira, and so on). You can also alter the default symbol ($) through USRPROPS.TXT.
Transaction Costs
Labor
Specify the cost of the labor consumed directly in the elementary business process.
Materials and Services
Specify the cost of the materials and services consumed directly in the elementary business process.
Capital Costs
Facilities and Equipment
Specify the cost of the facilities and equipment used directly in the elementary business process.
Unit Cost properties
As part of the elementary business processes in your models, you establish costs for each event that causes the elementary business process to be performed – in other words, the total cost of an elementary business process, divided by the Process Performance Summary, gives you the unit cost.
Unit Cost
Input: the total cost of an elementary business process (see Cost Breakdown), divided by the Process Performance Summary, gives you the unit cost.
Output: the total cost of an elementary business process divided by the Process Performance Summary, gives you the unit cost.
Estimated Cost per Month: the total cost of an elementary business process (see Cost Breakdown), divided by the Process Performance Summary, gives you the estimated costs per unit per month.
Estimated Cost per Order: the total cost of an elementary business process (see Cost Breakdown), divided by the number of orders, gives you the estimated costs per order.
Cost Drivers
Often times the cost of an event is more dependent on a cost driver within the event than the event itself. For example, the time it takes fill an order might depend on the number of line items in the order. Or, the cost of a print job might depend on number of production runs. In these cases, line items and production runs are cost drivers. It is more effective to compute costs per cost driver, rather than unit.
Cost Driver
In the cost driver text field, enter the name of the cost driver or cost drivers.
Cost Driver Estimated Units Per Month
Enter the estimated number of cost driver units incurred per month.
Estimated Cost By Cost Driver Unit
The total cost of an elementary business process (see Cost Breakdown), divided by the cost driver estimated units (see property above).
Quality Cost properties
As part of the Process Performance Summary of the elementary business processes in your models, you establish costs for adding quality to your products and services.
The default unit of measure for the costs is dollars ($). A text field is provided so that you can type in any measurement unit (that is, 1000 lira, and so on). You can also alter the default symbol ($) through USRPROPS.TXT.
Quality Costs include:
Prevention
Inspection
Rework
Scrap
In addition, there are Operations costs associated with the quality costs. The sum of all quality costs plus the operation cost adds up to the total production costs for an elementary business process.
Quality Statistics include:
Error Rate is the percentage of cases processed incorrectly per elementary business process.
First Run Yield is the percentage of cases processed correctly through the end of a particular elementary business process or (more often) the entire process thread. It incorporates yields of all the upstream processes.
Performance Measurement
Performance Measurement is a system for monitoring, managing, and improving the business processes of the organization.
The Performance Measurement properties of an elementary business process are as described below:
Measurement System Detail
Within this text field you can enter a description of the characteristics of your measurement system. A good measurement system can include the following properties:
measure of quantity, quality, cost, and time
inclusion of all relevant viewpoints, for example customers, users of the process, owners of the business, and so on
statistical control limits used to distinguish normal statistical variation from dethroughtions and special cases
direct measurements of process performers
measurements that invoke action to improve the process
balanced reporting that does not overemphasize any particular part of performance
and so on.
Target Cycle Time – 50 (median) , 80, 100 (maximum)
Cycle time is the elapsed time per transaction, or event. This includes actual processing time (see above) and additional time consumed by movement and waiting. Enter the time to cycle through the process, by percentile. There are three percentiles – 50 percentile (median), 80 percentile, and 100 percentile (maximum). System Architect provides a text field to hold this information, so that you can type in the unit of measure – for example, the elementary business process Enter Order might have a Median Percentile of 5 hrs, an 80 Percentile of 8 hrs, and a Maximum Percentile of 1 hr.
Target Average Cost ($/order)
Enter the target average cost of the elementary business process per event. For example, if the event is an Order, enter the cost of each business process per Order. The default unit of measure for the costs is dollars ($). A text field is provided so that you can type in any measurement unit (that is, 1000 lira, and so on). You can also alter the default symbol ($) in the USRPROPS.TXT file.
Target Minimum Error Rate
Enter the target minimum error rate – the percentage of cases processed incorrectly per elementary business process.
Measures and Goals
Cycle Time Measures:- Elapsed time per transaction.
Cost Measures: Resource input per transaction.
Quality Measures: Correct outputs as a percentage of the total, expressed in a number of formats including minimum, average, maximum, range, and percentiles.
Function Detail
The list of functions that an elementary business process performs is listed within the EBP's Function Detail tab.
Parent Function
Lists the functions that the elementary business process performs. This list is read-only – functions are added to the list through the matrix editor (View > Matrix Browser; click the Business Enterprise tab, Elem Bus Process to Function).
Contained in Thread
Lists the Process Threads that the elementary business process is involved in. This list is read-only: Process Threads are added to the list through the matrix editor (select View > Matrix Browser, select the Business Enterprise tab, and double-click the Elem Bus Process to Process Thread matrix). The matrix editor is itself updated by process threads that get information from Process Chart and Process Decomposition diagrams (see Process Threads in Process Chart modeling).
See also
Process Charts