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The following article will explain how you can use ARIS Business Simulator for simulation purposes within your company. Based on the more general article on the subject of simulation published by Geoff Hook I would like to share personal experiences relating to project work that involves the use of ARIS Business Simulator (formerly known as ARIS Simulation). In this context I will examine both the benefits of KPI-based process simulation on the one hand and the relevance of soft factors that also play a role in projects on the other hand.
During my work as a consultant I have managed a great number of BPM projects and have noticed that many customers wonder what may be the benefits of using simulation. In my opinion, performing simulations using ARIS Business Simulator can provide a variety of relevant KPIs on the process flow, on resource usage, etc. Also, features such as colored animation and attribute placement help better understand the procedure under consideration, charts can be used to illustrate KPIs, and simulation experiments are an appropriate means of identifying optimization potential. In any case, using simulation is recommendable if it enables you to accomplish all or some of the goals mentioned below, or if it can serve to provide information that is explicitly needed.
Goals of using ARIS Business Simulator
The dynamic simulation of ARIS Business Simulator not only enables you to validate your process models, but also supports you in successfully performing the following tasks:
- Process analysis and optimization, including the identification of bottlenecks, internal and external benchmarking, resource optimization, and process cost management
- Human resource and capacity planning
- Risk assessment, risk minimization, as well as risk control (new feature available with ARIS 7.1 SR8 and later versions)
In the context of process optimization, for example, you can perform simulation procedures to determine relevant KPIs referring to the frequency of occurrence of main events, wait times caused by resource bottlenecks, or the degree of utilization of human or technical resources. Within the scope of human resources planning the sum of the required processing times is of major interest. Simulating risks and risk controls will reveal the amount of damages that may be caused if a risk occurs, the amount of risk prevention or risk identification by means of controls, as well as the amount of costs incurred by risk control.
Definition of goals, identification of benefits, consideration of soft factors
In all of my projects I not only ask customers about the goals they want to accomplish, but also about the benefit they expect from using simulation. Another question that needs to be answered is who might be interested in receiving the information provided (i.e., what is the target group?). The process of defining objectives is a creative process that may imply techniques such as brainstorming and brainwriting. As far as the benefit for individual employees or for the entire company is concerned I have always invited customers to define what improvements they are aiming at and what may be of interest for the target group. Setting attractive goals can be a major factor of success. Besides the technical know-how this also involves a certain amount of intuition. Furthermore, existing problems can be a motivation to define as well as perform process optimization, which again will result in the generation of benefit.
Keep in constant contact
Past simulation projects have shown that close cooperation with the target group and among all process participants is recommended to ensure permanent validation of simulation results and to check on a regular basis whether the aim of supporting the target group is still successfully pursued.
This kind of cooperation is also useful at later stages of a process, for example in the phase of identifying improvement potential. In this context you can use ARIS Business Simulator to assess improvement proposals with the help of simulation experiments and thus determine the best scenario.
Data required for simulation
The consideration of whether or not ARIS Business Simulator is a useful instrument for your business usually implies questions such as: What data do I have to provide to be able to perform a simulation? How much effort is required for preparing the relevant process models?
The answers to these questions depend on the objectives that are to be achieved by the simulation procedure and on the accuracy you expect from the simulation results.
If, for example, you want to use simulation in order to realize human resources planning, for which the required processing time (e.g., for the implementation of new processes) is to be determined, the basic input for the process model (EPC or BPMN) is rather limited:
- expected process execution frequency (defined based on the start event/s)
- processing time per function
- probabilities at the branches of the paths
When illustrating human resources planning the process model should be designed in such way that all the tasks that have to be performed can be covered by the resources that are available (i.e., no bottlenecks due to an unlimited number of resources, e.g., 10,000 employees).
The results of human resources planning can be examined in more detail in terms of time. Especially processes that are known to have peak times of utilization should be subjected to a more detailed analysis (see paragraph on process optimization) so that resource bottlenecks can be avoided on a long-term basis by increasing resource availability where necessary.
If you are aiming at process optimization (or human resources planning with regard to peak times as mentioned above) you may want to obtain more precise results. Within the scope of process optimization it is of interest to take a closer look at resource-dependent wait times and throughput times. Here, you need to gather more information than in the case of human resources planning, such as:
(See human resources planning)
- Number of available resources
- Work times of the resources
- Times/Process start distribution
- Additional information that increases the precision of the simulation model (e.g., is it possible to have ad-hoc interruptions of tasks by pauses?)
Figure 1: Most important input for process simulation
Note: When performing a more precise process analysis (e.g., for the purpose of pocess optimization) the focus lies on the aspect of time (WHEN do which tasks have to be performed, are resources available NOW, etc.) so that the dynamic of the simulation comes into play. Dynamic simulation means that the model status is checked and considered at each and every moment. Thus it becomes transparent whether tasks (process folders) can be processed by resources, or dynamic wait times occur due to a lack of resources, which increases the throughput time.
Generally it can be said that the more detailed the process description and the more sophisticated the validation, the more precise the result.
Recommendations:
- Explain the benefits of simulation to the relevant target groups.
- When preparing process models for simulation purposes it may be useful to cooperate closely with the operating departments to not only collect input data, but also improvement proposals.
- Value your employees' input.
- Win your employees' trust by explaining to them that the process model will not contain every single work step in detail and that the planned degree of utilization will be below 100%.
Conclusion
As described in more detail above the dynamic simulation of ARIS Business Simulator is a very useful feature as it can
- help managers get a more profound understanding of the actual work load,
- serve to improve human resources management, especially for complex or new projects,
- support process optimization projects,
- be used for risk assessment and for determining the required amount of investments on risk control activities
When using ARIS Business Simulator for optimization projects, important factors are the focus on potential benefits, the availability of KPIs, process creativity, as well as close cooperation among all parties involved in the project.
Features such as statistical evaluation based on concrete KPIs, interpretable charts, colored animation, and simulation experiments make ARIS Business Simulator a very powerful tool for business process optimization with an untapped potential that has yet to be discovered by a great number of present or future customers.
