April 14, 2016 Henrique Rozenfeld

Business Process Management (BPM) for innovation

BPM term has two meanings:

  • as a class of ICT systems, also known as workflow management software
  • as a managerial approach

This second meaning is the object of investigation of our research group.

BPM approach

Process is defined as a series of actions that produce something and transform inputs in outputs. Business is defined as an organization of people for carrying out activities to deliver value for stakeholders including customers. Business Process is then a series of actions that deliver value to stakeholders and can be classified into following categories:

  • Primary processes (or core), also known as end-to-end processes. They deliver value to the customers
  • Support processes as the title indicates support other BPs. They don’t directly deliver value to customers, but to other stakeholders (for instance, the responsible for primary processes) and might be essential for the organization.
  • Management processes measure, control and continuously improve the organization by means of their processes.

In our research group we are interested in all kinds of BPs related to innovation.

BPM has many perspectives, and we adopt the vision of BPM as a management process (as the title suggests) that obviously manages the BPs, which are considered assets of an organization. In our case BPs related to innovation.

BPM deals with definition, design, control and continuous improvement of BPs.

Once a BP is defined, we adopt a BPM cycle that includes:

  • BPM planning;
  • BP analysis of the as-is situation (diagnosis);
  • Definition of to-be situation (design);
  • Definition and selection of improvement projects / actions;
  • Implementation of improvement projects / actions;
  • Monitoring of BPs Performance (control)

One main focus of our research group is the use of process models (also called reference models) and consequently process modeling for analysis and design of BPs related to innovation.

Our researches investigate questions such as:

  • How to perform diagnosis of current situation of innovation processes as a first phase of a BPM cycle of process improvement?
  • Which are the most appropriated methods for modelling innovation processes?
  • How could we define process models for supporting innovation?

The innovation processes considered are: product or PSS development; front-end of innovation processes; design process, etc.

 

Ongoing projects:

Finished projects:

Researchers:

Publications: