Toward Enterprise Process Engineering: Configuration Measurement and Analysis
Abstract
The enterprise process has become a central unit of analysis in management. But a dearth of theory and methods to predict process performance is available to the enterprise manager. With the proposition that enterprise process design represents an engineering problem as much as a managerial one, we focus on the process configuration and measurement to overcome design limitations that currently confront the enterprise manager. Building on seminal work for process description and comparison, and employing Graph Theory and Measurement Theory, we integrate this work and demonstrate useful analytical properties associated with the kinds of measures proposed (e.g., ratio scales). This represents a new result, which extends the prior research on enterprise process design and makes a contribution to our understanding in management science. Further, with parallels to the predictive capability enjoyed by engineers who design physical artifacts, we indicate how enterprise process configuration measures can be used to hypothesize relations with respect to enterprise performance. And we suggest how enterprise managers may design processes in a deductive manner-working backward from performance requirements to determine configuration parameters required for designs to meet performance goals. These represent new ca abilities not previously available to the enterprise manager as well as another contribution of the resent research.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Sep 01, 2002
- Accession Number
- ADA407615
Entities
People
- Mary E. Nissen
Organizations
- Naval Postgraduate School