Abstract
Current workflow technology offers rich features to manage and enact business processes. In principle, the technology enables actors to cooperate in the execution of business processes regardless of their geographical location. Furthermore, the technology is considered as an efficient means to reduce processing times. In this paper, we evaluate the effects on the performance of a workflow process in an organizational setting where actors are geographically distributed. The studied process is exceptional, because equivalent tasks can be performed at different locations. We have analyzed a large workflow process log with state-of-the art mining tools associated with the ProM framework. Our analysis leads to the conclusion that there is a positive effect on process performance when workflow actors are geographically close.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
van der Aalst, W.M.P., van Hee, K.M.: Workflow Management: Models, Methods, and Systems. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA (2002)
van der Aalst, W.M.P., Reijers, H.A., Song, M.: Discovering social networks from event logs. Computer Supported Cooperative Work 14(6), 549–593 (2005)
van der Aalst, W.M.P., Weijters, A.J.M.M., Maruster, L.: Workflow Mining: Discovering Process Models from Event Logs. IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering 16(9), 1128–1142 (2004)
Allen, T.: Managing the Flow of Technology: Technology Transfer and the Dissemination of Technological Information within the R&D Organisation. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA (1977)
Barker, R.G.: Ecological psychology. Stanford University Press, Stanford, Calif (1968)
Becker, J., Vossen, G.: Geschaftsprozesmodellierung und Workflow-Management: Eine Einfuhring, chapter Geschaftsprozesmodellierung und Workflow-Management. Modelle, Methoden, Werkzeuge, Albany, pp. 17–26 (1996)
Boutellier, R., Gassmann, O., Macho, H., Roux, M.: Management of Dispersed R&D Teams. R&D Management 28(1), 13–25 (1998)
Carmel, E., Agarwal, R.: Tactical approaches for alleviating distance in global software development. Software, IEEE 18(2), 22–29 (2001)
Davenport, T.H.: Process innovation. Harvard Business School Press, Boston, Mass (1994)
van Dongen, B.F., de Medeiros, A.K.A., Verbeek, H.M.W., Weijters, A.J.M.M., van der Aalst, W.M.P.: The ProM framework: A new era in process mining tool support. In: Ciardo, G., Darondeau, P. (eds.) ICATPN 2005. LNCS, vol. 3536, pp. 444–454. Springer, Heidelberg (2005)
Dumas, M., van der Aalst, W.M.P., ter Hofstede, A.H.: Process-aware information systems: bridging people and software through process technology (2005)
Georgakopoulos, D., Hornick, M., Sheth, A.: An overview of workflow management: From process modeling to workflow automation infrastructure. Distributed and Parallel Databases 3(2), 119–153 (1995)
Grefen, P., Pernici, B., Sánchez, G.: Database Support for Workflow Management: The Wide Project. Kluwer Academic Pub., Dordrecht (1999)
Herbst, J., Karagiannis, D.: Workflow mining with InWoLvE. Computers in Industry 53(3), 245–264 (2004)
Herrmann, T., Hoffmann, M.: The Metamorphoses of Workflow Projects in their Early Stages. Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) 14(5), 399–432 (2005)
IDS Scheer. ARIS Process Performance Manager (ARIS PPM) (2002), http://www.ids-scheer.com
Kraut, R.E., Fussell, S.R., Brennan, S.E., Siegel, J.: Understanding effects of proximity on collaboration: Implications for technologies to support remote collaborative work. Distributed work, pp. 137–162 (2002)
Kueng, P.: The effects of workflow systems on organizations: A qualitative study. In: Van der Aalst, W.M.P., Desel, J., Oberweis, A. (eds.) Business process management: Models, techniques, and empirical studies, pp. 301–316. Springer, Berlin (2000)
Lawrence, P. (ed): Workflow Handbook 1997, Workflow Management Coalition. John Wiley and Sons, New York (1997)
Mohan, C., Alonso, G., Gunthor, R., Kamath, M.: Exotica: A Research Perspective on Workflow Management Systems. Data Engineering Bulletin 18(1), 19–26 (1995)
Oba, M., Onada, S., Komoda, N.: Evaluating the quantitative effects of workflow systems based on real cases. In: Proceedings of the 33rd Hawaii international conference on system sciences, vol. 6, p. 6031. IEEE, Washington, DC (2000)
Reijers, H.A., van der Aalst, W.M.P.: The Effectivenes of Workflow Management Systems: Predictions and Lessons Learned. International Journal of Information Management 56(5), 457–471 (2005)
Sengupta, K., Zhao, J.L.: Improving the communicational effectiveness of virtual organizations through workflow automation. International Journal of Electronic Commerce 3(1), 49–69 (1998)
Steinfield, C., Jang, C.Y., Pfaff, B.: Supporting virtual team collaboration: the TeamSCOPE system. In: Proceedings of the international ACM SIGGROUP conference on Supporting group work, pp. 81–90 (1999)
Townsend, A.M., DeMarie, S.M., Hendrickson, A.R.: Virtual teams: Technology and the workplace of the future. IEEE Engineering Management Review 28(2), 69–80 (2000)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2007 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Reijers, H.A., Song, M., Jeong, B. (2007). On the Performance of Workflow Processes with Distributed Actors: Does Place Matter?. In: Alonso, G., Dadam, P., Rosemann, M. (eds) Business Process Management. BPM 2007. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 4714. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-75183-0_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-75183-0_3
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-75182-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-75183-0
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)