On developing system dynamics model for business process simulation

TLDR

Business operations are formally described by process models that capture activities, information, and flow, and system dynamics modeling offers conceptual tools to simulate complex behaviors over time, enabling what‑if analysis, but requires deep understanding of the target operations, organizations, and financial structures. The paper offers heuristics and guidelines for deriving system dynamics models from business process models, illustrated with a supply‑chain management example. The authors present a set of heuristics and guidelines, supplemented by a supply‑chain management case study, to guide the transformation of business process models into system dynamics models.

Abstract

Business operations can be formally described in business process models that capture activities, information, and flow embedded in business operation. System dynamics modeling is a set of conceptual tools that enable business process designers to build computer simulations of complex business process behaviors. System dynamics models provide accurate description of system behavior along the time dimension. It gives a convenient tool to conduct what if analysis though dynamics points of view. However, to develop system dynamics models requires keen understanding of the physics of the target business operations, business organizations, and financial structures and so on. This paper is aimed to provide heuristics and guidelines of developing system dynamics models based on given business process models along with associated reference contexts. An example, from supply chain management domain, of using business process models to derive system dynamics models will be given in the paper.