The diploma thesis focuses on application of a chosen BPM methodology in a real trade company with the aim of optimization of its processes, identification of the possible improvement areas and proposing measures leading to an increase of the efficiency of the company. One BPM methodology is chosen based on a methodology comparison in the introductory part of the work. A description of the trade company and a process analysis follows. Then an identification of the improvement potential is done and limits of the improvement potential are found followed by the projects proposed, which should lead to an increase of the efficiency of the company's processes. This thesis produces an overview of chosen BPM methodologies and approaches, brings up the results of the process analysis in a real trade company, and proposes a set of project for realization. Ultimately the work done demonstrates a procedure of BPM methodology implementation in a small trading company, which may be replicated in another similar firm.

This thesis explores the potential to unify three emerging disciplines: enterprise engineering, enterprise architecture and enterprise ontology. The current fragmentation that exists in literature on enterprise alignment and design constrains the development and growth of the emerging disciplines. Enterprises need to use a multi-disciplinary approach when they continuously align, design and re-design the enterprise. Although enterprises need to be aligned internally (across various enterprise facets), as well as externally (with the environment), most alignment approaches still focus on business-IT alignment, i.e. aligning the business operations with the information and communication technologies and systems of the enterprise. This study focuses on a popular business-IT alignment approach,called the foundation for execution approach, and its associated artefact, called the operating model. The study acknowledges the theoretical contribution of the operating model to establish the required level of business process integration and standardisation at an enterprise in delivering goods and services to customers. Highlighting the practical problems in selecting an operating model for an enterprise, and more specifically the practical problems of identifying process reuse potential at an enterprise, a thesis statement is formulated: The operating model concept, as part of a business-IT alignment approach, can be enhanced with a process reuse identification framework, when a business-IT alignment contextualisation is used. The study is divided into two research questions. The first research question addresses the current fragmentation that exists in the literature, which impairs reuse of the existing business-IT alignment knowledge base. An inductive literature review develops the Business-IT Alignment Model to provide a common contextualisation for current business-IT alignment approaches. The second research question addresses the practical problems of the operating model regarding the identification of process reuse potential at an enterprise. Applying the newly developed Business-IT Alignment Model as a contextualisation instrument, the study demonstrates the use of design research in developing the Process Reuse Identification Framework. The conclusion after the investigation of the two research questions is that the thesis statement was confirmed, i.e. the operating model concept, as part of a business-IT alignment approach, can be enhanced with a process reuse identification framework, when a business-IT contextualisation is used. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2013. / Industrial and Systems Engineering / Unrestricted

This research investigates the use of an alternate means of modelling the performance of a train of feed water heaters in a steam cycle power plant, using machine learning. The goal of this study was to use a simple artificial neural network (ANN) to predict the behaviour of the plant system, specifically the inlet bled steam (BS) mass flow rate and the outlet water temperature of each feedwater heater. The output of the model was validated through the use of a thermofluid engineering model built for the same plant. Another goal was to assess the ability of both the thermofluid model and ANN model to predict plant behaviour under out of normal operating circumstances. The thermofluid engineering model was built on FLOWNEX® SE using existing custom components for the various heat exchangers. The model was then tuned to current plant conditions by catering for plant degradation and maintenance effects. The artificial neural network was of a multi-layer perceptron (MLP) type, using the rectified linear unit (ReLU) activation function, mean squared error (MSE) loss function and adaptive moments (Adam) optimiser. It was constructed using Python programming language. The ANN model was trained using the same data as the FLOWNEX® SE model. Multiple architectures were tested resulting in the optimum model having two layers, 200 nodes or neurons in each layer with a batch size of 500, running over 100 epochs. This configuration attained a training accuracy of 0.9975 and validation accuracy of 0.9975. When used on a test set and to predict plant performance, it achieved a MSE of 0.23 and 0.45 respectively. Under normal operating conditions (six cases tested) the ANN model performed better than the FLOWNEX® SE model when compared to actual plant behaviour. Under out of normal conditions (four cases tested), the FLOWNEX SE® model performed better than the ANN. It is evident that the ANN model was unable to capture the “physics” of a heat exchanger or the feed heating process as a result of its poor performance in the out of normal scenarios. Further tuning by way of alternate activation functions and regularisation techniques had little effect on the ANN model performance. The ANN model was able to accurately predict an out of normal case only when it was trained to do so. This was achieved by augmenting the original training data with the inputs and results from the FLOWNEX SE® model for the same case. The conclusion drawn from this study is that this type of simple ANN model is able to predict plant performance so long as it is trained for it. The validity of the prediction is highly dependent on the integrity of the training data. Operating outside the range which the model was trained for will result in inaccurate predictions. It is recommended that out of normal scenarios commonly experienced by the plant be synthesised by engineering modelling tools like FLOWNEX® SE to augment the historic plant data. This provides a wider spectrum of training data enabling more generalised and accurate predictions from the ANN model.

Driven by intense competition, increasing operational cost and strict environmental regulations, the modern process and energy industry needs to find the best possible way to adapt to maintain profitability. Optimization of control and operation of the industrial systems is essential to satisfy the contradicting objectives of improving product quality and process efficiency while reducing production cost and plant downtime. Use of optimization not only improves the control and monitoring of assets but also offers better coordination among different assets. Thus, it can lead to considerable savings in energy and resource consumption, and consequently offer a reduction in operational costs, by offering better control, diagnostics and decision support. This is one of the main driving forces behind developing new methods, tools and frameworks that can be integrated with the existing industrial automation platforms to benefit from optimal control and operation. The main focus of this dissertation is the use of different process models, soft sensors and optimization techniques to improve the control, diagnostics and decision support for the process and energy industry. A generic architecture for an optimal control, diagnostics and decision support system, referred to here as a learning system, is proposed. The research is centred around an investigation of different components of the proposed learning system. Two very different case studies within the energy-intensive pulp and paper industry and the promising micro-combined heat and power (CHP) industry are selected to demonstrate the learning system. One of the main challenges in this research arises from the marked differences between the case studies in terms of size, functions, quantity and structure of the existing automation systems. Typically, only a few pulp digesters are found in a Kraft pulping mill, but there may be hundreds of units in a micro-CHP fleet. The main argument behind the selection of these two case studies is that if the proposed learning system architecture can be adapted for these significantly different cases, it can be adapted for many other energy and process industrial cases. Within the scope of this thesis, mathematical modelling, model adaptation, model predictive control and diagnostics methods are studied for continuous pulp digesters, whereas mathematical modelling, model adaptation and diagnostics techniques are explored for the micro-CHP fleet. / FUDIPO – FUture DIrections for Process industry Optimization

This thesis engages in process modelling and description of selected business processes which are underway in the department of Economy and Operation of the Czech TV, in Television studio in Brno. The process models are created using the CASE tool Adonis. The theoretical part is focused on clarifying important concepts, methodologies and tools in the process management. In the analytical part, the selected processes are thoroughly described and graphically illustrated. The proposal part of the thesis highlights the improvement of selected business processes and assesses their effectiveness.

The aim of this thesis is a lay of the business processes in Vodárenska akciová společnost, a.s. In theoretical part of the thesis are describe characteristics, mapping and modeling of processes in this company. In practical part are mapping processes, which this company make in order for their customers and daily processes, whereby sustains own infrastructure.

Les travaux présentés dans ce mémoire s’inscrivent dans une problématique d’aide à l’élaboration d’offres, en adoptant le point de vue de l’entreprise soumissionnaire lors d’un processus de réponse à appel d’offres. Ces offres peuvent concerner indifféremment des produits, des services ou des systèmes produit-service (PSS). Dans le cadre de nos travaux, nous regroupons cette diversité sous le terme « PvSS ». Nous nous intéressons donc à la problématique suivante : «Comment maîtriser et assister l’élaboration d’offres en réponse à appel d’offres ?». Notre première contribution consiste en un cadre de modélisation et d’exploitation des connaissances. Ce cadre est composé d’un modèle générique de structure d’offre, ainsi que d’un modèle d’exploitation des connaissances. Le modèle générique de structure d’offre permet de modéliser à la fois (1) la solution technique (ce que l’entreprise propose au client) et (2) son processus de réalisation (comment l’entreprise fournit cette solution). Il intègre également les notions de contexte d’élaboration, d’exigences client, d’indicateurs d’évaluation (coût, délai de réalisation, confiance, etc.) et de risques. Ce modèle est formalisé et exploité à l’aide d’une taxonomie, d’un problème de satisfaction de contraintes (CSP) et de raisonnement à partir de cas (CBR). Notre deuxième contribution porte sur la caractérisation d’une méthodologie de déploiement et d’exploitation du cadre proposé. Cette méthodologie, appelée ISIEM, intègre des phases d’adaptation et de déploiement du cadre en entreprise (phases d’Initialisation, Spécialisation et Implémentation), mais également des phases d’utilisation (phases d’Exploitation et Mise à jour). Les travaux présentés dans ce mémoire s’inscrivent dans le cadre du projet ANR OPERA. Nos deux contributions sont illustrées par un cas d’étude provenant de l’une des entreprises partenaires du projet. / The work presented in this thesis deals with assistance in bid elaboration, by adopting the point of view of the bidder during a tendering response process. These bids may concern products, services or product-service systems (PSS). As part of our work, we group this diversity under the term“PvSS”. We are therefore interested in the following problem: “How to master and assist in bid elaboration in response to calls for tenders?”. Our first contribution is a framework for modelling and exploiting knowledge. This framework is composed of a generic model of bid structure, as well as a knowledge exploitation model. The generic model of bid structure allows the modelling of both (1) the technical solution (what the company proposes to the customer) and (2) its realization process (how the company provides this solution to the customer). It also integrates the elaboration context, customer requirements, the evaluation indicators (cost, delivery time, confidence, etc.) and risks. This model is formalized and exploited using a taxonomy, a constraint satisfaction problem (CSP) and case-based reasoning (CBR). Our second contribution deals with the characterization of a methodology for deploying and exploiting the proposed framework. This methodology, called ISIEM, includes phases of adaptation and deployment of the framework in enterprise (Initialization, Specialization and Implementation phases), but also phases of use (Exploitation and Maintenance phases). The work presented in this thesis is part of the ANR OPERA project. Our two contributions are illustrated by a case study from one of the project’s partner companies.

(in English): The basis of this diploma thesis is to describe business process modelling and its current use in IT companies. The subject is to determine if respondents use process modelling in their companies or if they find it unsuitable. In the theoretical part, modelling in the context of information science, new media, and some models of communication are briefly presented. An important part of the theory is focused on the chapter of cognitive modelling, as a basic approach for creating process models. It follows an introduction of process modelling and a current market overview in this industry. The practical part maps the use of modelling in companies. Methodology is presented as first followed by data analysis. The research uses questionnaire survey for data collection, for qualitative data processing applies the grounded theory. Finally, the thesis evaluates the current state of modelling on the Czech market and defines the strengths and weaknesses of the process modelling.

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Många företag har börjat inse att processmodellering kan vara ett bra verktyg för att bättre förstå sitt företag. Att man kan använda processkartor för att analysera och förbättra sina processer.Centsoft AB är ett litet IT-företag med sex anställda som omsätter ca 5,4 miljoner kronor per år. Centsofts huvudsakliga produkt är en webbaserad applikation för elektronisk fakturahantering. I dagsläget har Centsoft ingen dokumentation alls som visar hur dess interna processer ser ut. Därför har studenten fått i uppdrag av Centsoft ABatt kartlägga dess affärsprocesser, analysera dessa och komma med eventuella förbättringsförslag. Arbetet är indelat i tre delar, först genomfördes en förstudie av Centsoft för att förstå dess verksamhet, ta reda på vilka processer det har och produceraen domänbeskrivning. Sedan följde en modelleringsdel under vilken processkartor över verksamheten konstruerades, denna del skedde iterativt för att säkerställa att modellerna blev klara i tid. Arbetet avslutades med en analysdel för att identifiera potentiella förbättringsmöjligheter.Teknik som användes för förbättringsförslag var processförbättring, eftersom process-redesign bedömdes som alltför tidskrävande.Resultatet är elva stycken processkartor, varav två är förbättringsförslag. En av slutsatserna som kunde dras utifrån detta arbete är att Centsoft har välfungerande affärsprocesser som bidrar till att företaget expanderar. Det här arbetet blir en bra grund för Centsoft att arbeta vidare på, t.ex.vid framtida expansioner, då det kanske blir aktuellt att konstruera nya processer, eller ändra befintliga. / Many companies have begun to realize process modelling can be a useful tool to better understand their business, and that process maps can beused to analyze and improve the company processes. Centsoft AB is a small IT company with six employees and has revenue of approximately 5.4 million SEK per year. Centsofts main product is aweb-based application for handling electronic invoices.As of today, Centsoft does not have any documentation at all of its internal processes. Therefore Centsoft has given the student an assignment to identify and analyze its business processes, and to come up with any suggestions for improvement.This project is divided into three parts; first part is a case study of Centsoft which is done in order to understand its operations, identify its business processes and to produce a domain description. Second part is to create process maps for the business; this part was done iteratively to ensure that the process maps were delivered on time. The third part is to analyze the process maps for potential improvement opportunities. Technique used to improve the processes was process improvement, because process-redesign was considered too time consuming.The result is eleven process maps, two of which are suggestions for improvement. A conclusion that could be drawn from this project based on the successful expanding and profit-making by Centsoft is that they have well-functioning processes. This project will be a good basis for Centsoft during future expanding, when the need for redesigning existing or designingnew processes arises.