Chapter 7: Quantitative Process Analysis

Contents
1. Flow Analysis
2. Queuing Analysis
3. Simulation
4. Recap

SEITE 1
 Process Analysis in the BPM Lifecycle

Management Processes

Process Define Vision Develop Strategy Implement

Strategy
Manage Risk

les for BPM lifecycle and process mining identification Core Processes

Procure Procure Market Deliver

Manage
Customer
Materials Products Products Products
Service

35h B 30h Support Processes

15h Process architecture Manage Personnel

Manage
Information Manage Assets

A E
D
5m 3m 5m 10m 30m 2h 10m

15m
C
1.5h 10min
Conformance and Process As-is process
performance
discovery model
insights

A B C D E

Process Process
monitoring analysis

Executable Insights on
process weaknesses and
model their impact

Process Process
implementation To-be process redesign
model
Chapter 7: Quantitative Process Analysis

Contents
1. Flow Analysis
2. Queuing Analysis
3. Simulation
4. Recap

SEITE 3
4

Flow analysis

Process
model

Process
performance

Performance
of each
activity
Refresher: Process performance measures

Time

Process
perform
ance

Quality Cost
6

Common time-related measures

Time taken by
value-adding
Processing activities
time Time between start
and completion of a

Cycle
process instance

time
Waiting
time
Time taken by
non-value-adding
activities
7

Cycle time efficiency

Cycle
Processi Cycle Time
ng Time Time Efficienc
y
8

Flow analysis of cycle time

1 day 1 day

1 day 3 days

3 days 2 days

Cycle time = X days

9

Sequence – Example

• What is the average cycle time?

Cycle time = 10 + 20 = 30
Example: Alternative Paths

• What is the average cycle time?

50
90
%

50
10
%

Cycletime
Cycle time==10
10++0.9*20+0.1*10
(20+10)/2 = 25=
29
Example: Parallel paths

• What is the average cycle time?

Cycle time = 10 + 20 = 30
Example: Rework loop

• What is the average cycle time?

80%
100%
1%

0%
99%
20%

Cycle time = 10 + 20 = 30
Cycle time = 10 + 20/0.01 = 2010
Cycle time = 10 + 20/0.8 = 35
Flow analysis equations for cycle time

T1 T2 ... TN
CT = T1+T2+…+ TN

T1
p1

T2
p2
CT = p1*T1+p2*T2+…+ pn*TN
pn ...

TN

T1

T2 CT = max(T1, T2,…, TN)

...

TN

1-r
T
CT = T / (1-r)
r
14

Flow analysis of cycle time

1 day 1 day
20% 60
%

80%
1 day 3 days 40
%
3 days 2 days

1/0.8 max(1,3) 3 0.6*1+0.4*2

Cycle time = 1.25 + 3 + 3 + 1.4 =

8.65 days
15

Flow analysis of processing time

0.5 hour 2
hours
20% 60
%

80%
2 hours 2 hours 40
%
3 hours 0.5 mins.

2/0.8 max(0.5,3) 2 0.6*2+0.4*0.5

Processing time = 2.5 + 3 + 2 + 1.4 = 8.9 hours

Cycle time efficiency = 8.9 hours / 8.65 days = 12.9%
Flow analysis: scope and limitations

 We have seen how to use flow analysis for processing & cycle time calculation
 Flow analysis can also be applied to calculate:
 The average cost of process instances (assuming we know the cost of each activity)
 Cf. Section 7.1.6
 The number of times on average each activity is executed
 Can be used to calculate the “unit load” of each task, the resource utilization of each
resource pool, and the theoretical capacity of an “as is” process
 Cf. Section 7.1.5

 But flow analysis has some fundamental limitations…

Limitation 1: Not all Models are Structured
Limitation 2: Fixed arrival rate capacity

 Cycle time analysis does not consider:

 The rate at which new process instances are created (arrival rate)
 The number of available resources
 Higher arrival rate at fixed resource capacity
 high resource contention
 higher activity waiting times (longer queues)
 higher activity cycle time
 higher overall cycle time
 The slower you are, the more people have to queue up…
 and vice-versa
19

Resource utilization

Time
Time spent
available
per Resource
per
resource on utilization
resource for
process
process
work
work

Resource utilization = 60%

 on average resources are idle 40% of
their allocated time
20

Resource utilization vs. waiting time

Resource
utilization Waiting
time

Typically, when resource utilization > 90%

 Waiting time increases steeply
Interlude:
Cycle Time & Work-In-Progress
 WIP = (average) Work-In-Process
 Number of cases that are running (started but not yet completed)
 E.g. # of active and unfilled orders in an order-to-cash process
 WIP is a form of waste (cf. 7+1 sources of waste)
 Little’s Formula: WIP = ·CT
  = arrival rate (number of new cases per time unit)
 CT = cycle time
Exercise

A fast-food restaurant receives on average 1200

customers per day (between 10:00 and 22:00). During
peak times (12:00-15:00 and 18:00-21:00), the restaurant
receives around 900 customers in total, and 90 customers
can be found in the restaurant (on average) at a given
point in time. At non-peak times, the restaurant receives
300 customers in total, and 30 customers can be found in
the restaurant (on average) at a given point in time.
1. What is the average time that a customer spends in the
restaurant during peak times?
2. What is the average time that a customer spends in the
restaurant during non-peak times?
 Exercise (cont.)

3. The restaurant plans to launch a marketing campaign to attract more customers.

However, the restaurant’s capacity is limited and becomes too full during peak
times. What can the restaurant do to address this issue without investing in
extending its building?
Chapter 7: Quantitative Process Analysis

Contents
1. Flow Analysis
2. Queuing Analysis
3. Simulation
4. Recap

SEITE 24
25

Queuing Analysis

 Capacity problems are common and a key driver of process

redesign
 Need to balance the cost of increased capacity against the gains of
increased productivity and service
 Queuing and waiting time analysis is particularly important in
service systems
 Large costs of waiting and/or lost sales due to waiting
 Example – Emergency Room (ER) at a Hospital
 Patients arrive by ambulance or by their own accord
 One doctor is always on duty
 More patients seeks help  longer waiting times
 Should we increase the capacity from one to two doctors?

Inspired by an example by Laguna & Marklund (2004)

26

Delay is Caused by Job Interference

If arrivals are regular or sufficiently spaced apart, no queuing delay

occurs

Deterministic traffic

Variable but
spaced apart
traffic

© Dimitri P. Bertsekas
27

Burstiness Causes Interference

 Queuing results from variability in processing times

and/or interarrival times

© Dimitri P. Bertsekas
28

High Utilization Exacerbates Interference

 The queuing probability increases as the load increases

 Utilization close to 100% is unsustainable  too long queuing
times

© Dimitri P. Bertsekas
29

The Poisson Process

 Common arrival assumption in many queuing and simulation

models
 The times between arrivals are independent, identically
distributed and exponential
 P (arrival < t) = 1 – e-λt
 This distribution is applicable when the next arrival (i.e. the
next creation of a case) does not depend on how long ago
the previous arrival occurred
 In other words, the creation of a case is independent of the creation of
other cases.

Inspired by slide by Laguna & Marklund (2004)

30

Negative Exponential Distribution

31

Queuing theory: basic concepts

waiting service
arrivals


c m

Basic characteristics:
  (mean arrival rate) = average number of arrivals per time unit
 m (mean service rate) = average number of jobs that can be handled by
one server per time unit:
 c = number of servers

© Wil van der Aalst

32

Queuing theory concepts (cont.)


c m
Wq,Lq

W,L

Given  , m and c, we can calculate :

 occupation rate: r
 Wq = average time in queue
 W = average system in system (i.e. cycle time)
 Lq = average number in queue (i.e. length of queue)
 L = average number in system average (i.e. Work-in-Progress)

© Wil van der Aalst

33

M/M/1 queue


1 m
Assumptions:
• time between arrivals and
Capacity Demand λ
processing time follow a ρ 
negative exponential Available Capacity μ
distribution
• 1 server (c = 1)
• FIFO
L=r/(1- r) Lq= r2/(1- r) = L-r
W=L/=1/(m- ) Wq=Lq/=  /( m(m- ))

Inspired by a slide by Laguna & Marklund (2004)

34

M/M/c queue
• Now there are c servers in parallel, so the expected
capacity per time unit is then c*m

Capacity Demand 
r 
Available Capacity c * m

Little’s Formula  Wq=Lq/

W=Wq+(1/m)

Little’s Formula  L=W

Inspired by a slide by Laguna & Marklund (2004)

35

Tool Support

 For M/M/c systems, the exact computation of Lq is rather complex…

 ( / m ) c r
Lq   ( n  c) Pn  ...  P
2 0
n c c!(1  r)
1
 c1 ( / m) n ( / m)c 1 

P0     
 1  ( /(cm) 
 n 0 n! c!
 Consider using a tool, e.g.
 http://www.supositorio.com/rcalc/rcalclite.htm
 http://queueingtoolpak.org/ (for Excel)
36

Example – ER at County Hospital

 Situation
 Patients arrive according to a Poisson process with intensity  ( the time
between arrivals is exp() distributed.
 The service time (the doctor’s examination and treatment time of a patient)
follows an exponential distribution with mean 1/m (=exp(m) distributed)
 The ER can be modeled as an M/M/c system where c = the number of
doctors
 Data gathering
  = 2 patients per hour
 m = 3 patients per hour
 Question
– Should the capacity be increased from 1 to 2 doctors?

Inspired by a slide by Laguna & Marklund (2004)

37

Queuing Analysis – Hospital Scenario

 Interpretation
 To be in the queue = to be in the waiting room
 To be in the system = to be in the ER (waiting or under treatment)

Characteristic One doctor (c=1) Two Doctors (c=2)

r 2/3 1/3
Lq 4/3 patients 1/12 patients
L 2 patients 3/4 patients
Wq 2/3 h = 40 minutes 1/24 h = 2.5 minutes
W 1h 3/8 h = 22.5 minutes

 Should we increase the capacity from one to two doctors?

Inspired by a slide by Laguna & Marklund (2004)

38

Limitations of basic queuing models

 Can be used to analyze waiting times (and hence cycle times), but not cost or
quality measures
 Suitable for analyzing one single activity at a time, performed by one single
resource pool. Not suitable for analyzing end-to-end processes consisting of
multiple activities performed by multiple resource pools.
 These limitations are addressed by process simulation
Chapter 7: Quantitative Process Analysis

Contents
1. Value-Added Analysis
2. Queuing analysis
3. Simulation
4. Recap

SEITE 39
40

Process Simulation

 Versatile quantitative analysis method for

 As-is analysis
 What-if analysis
 In a nutshell:
 Run a large number of process instances
 Gather performance data (cost, time, resource usage)
 Calculate statistics from the collected data
41

Process Simulation

Define a
Model the Run the
simulation
process simulation
scenario

Repeat for Analyze the

alternative simulation
scenarios outputs
42

Example
43

Example
44
Elements of a simulation scenario
1. Processing times of activities
 Fixed value
 Probability distribution
45

Exponential Distribution
46

Normal Distribution
47

Choice of probability distribution

 Fixed
 Rare, can be used to approximate case where the activity
processing time varies very little
 Example: a task performed by a software application
 Normal
 Repetitive activities
 Example: “Check completeness of an application”
 Exponential
 Complex activities that may involve analysis or decisions
 Example: “Assess an application”
48

Simulation Example

Normal(10m, 2m)
Normal(10m, 2m)

0m

Exp(20m)

Normal(20m, 4m) Normal(10m, 2m)

49
Elements of a simulation model
1. Processing times of activities
 Fixed value
 Probability distribution
2. Conditional branching probabilities
3. Arrival rate of process instances and probability distribution
 Typically exponential distribution with a given mean inter-arrival time
 Arrival calendar, e.g. Monday-Friday, 9am-5pm, or 24/7
50

Branching probability and arrival rate

Arrival rate = 2 applications per hour
Inter-arrival time = 0.5 hour
Negative exponential distribution
From Monday-Friday, 9am-5pm

0.3

0.7

0.3

35m 55m

9:00 11:00 12:00 13:00 14:00

10:00
51
Elements of a simulation model
1. Processing times of activities
 Fixed value
 Probability distribution
2. Conditional branching probabilities
3. Arrival rate of process instances
 Typically exponential distribution with a given mean inter-arrival time
 Arrival calendar, e.g. Monday-Friday, 9am-5pm, or 24/7
4. Resource pools
52

Resource pools

 Name
 Size of the resource pool
 Cost per time unit of a resource in the pool
 Availability of the pool (working calendar)
 Examples
 Clerk Credit Officer
 € 25 per hour € 25 per hour
 Monday-Friday, 9am-5pm Monday-Friday, 9am-5pm
 In some tools, it is possible to define cost and calendar per resource,
rather than for entire resource pool
53
Elements of a simulation model
1. Processing times of activities
 Fixed value
 Probability distribution
2. Conditional branching probabilities
3. Arrival rate of process instances and probability distribution
 Typically exponential distribution with a given mean inter-arrival time
 Arrival calendar, e.g. Monday-Friday, 9am-5pm, or 24/7
4. Resource pools
5. Assignment of tasks to resource pools
54

Resource pool assignment

Clerk Officer

Syste
m
Officer

Clerk Officer
55

Process Simulation

✔ ✔ ✔
Define a
Model the Run the
simulation
process simulation
scenario

Repeat for Analyze the

alternative simulation
scenarios outputs
56

Output: Performance measures & histograms

57

Process Simulation

✔ ✔ ✔
Define a
Model the Run the
simulation
process simulation
scenario

✔
Repeat for Analyze the
alternative simulation
scenarios outputs
58

Tools for Process Simulation

 ARIS
 Bizagi Process Modeler
 ITP Commerce Process Modeler for Visio
 Logizian
 Oracle BPA
 Progress Savvion Process Modeler
 ProSim
 Signavio + BIMP
59

BIMP – bimp.cs.ut.ee

 Accepts standard BPMN 2.0 as input

 Simple form-based interface to enter simulation scenario
 Produces KPIs + simulation logs in MXML format
 Simulation logs can be imported to the ProM process mining tool
60

BIMP Demo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjXl6yASCSc
61

Pitfalls of simulation

 Stochasticity
 Data quality pitfalls
 Simplifying assumptions
62

Stochasticity

 Simulation results may differ from one run to another

 Make the simulation tiemframe long enough to cover weekly and seasonal
variability, where applicable
 Use multiple simulation runs
 Average results of multiple runs, compute confidence intervals
63

Data quality pitfalls

 Simulation results are only as trustworthy as the input data

 Rely as little as possible on “guesstimates”
 Use input analysis
 Deriver simulation scenario parameters from numbers in the scenario
 Use statistical tools to check fit the probability distributions
 Simulate the “as is” scenario and cross-check results against actual observations
64

Simulation assumptions

 That the process model is always followed to the letter

 No deviations
 No workarounds
 That there is no multi-tasking (the same resource performs multiple tasks
concurrently) nor batching (tasks being accumulated and performed in a single go)
 That resources work constantly and non-stop
 Every day is the same!
 No tiredness effects
 No distractions beyond “stochastic” ones
Chapter 7: Quantitative Process Analysis

Contents
1. Value-Added Analysis
2. Queuing analysis
3. Simulation
4. Recap

SEITE 65
Recap

 Assuming we have performance measures for each activity in a process, flow

analysis allows us to calculate the following performance measures for an “as is”
process:
 Cycle time, processing times, cycle time efficiency of a process
 Average cost per process instance
 It can also be used to calculate the theoretical capacity of an “as is” process and
the resource utilization of resource pools
 But it is not suitable for “what if” analysis
 Queing analysis is a suitable technique for “what if” analysis of waiting times and
cycle times, suitable for analyzing individual activities performed by one resource
pool
 Simulation is a versatile technique for “what if” analysis of entire processes,
covering waiting times, cycle times, and costs.
 Particularly useful for identifying bottlenecks

SLIDE 66