Why You Should Bother With Business Process Modeling process.st/business-process-modeling/
8/29/2016
Just like the basic ideas of processes and the division of labor, business process modeling was born in the mechanical industry. In the winter of 1921, Frank Gilbreth presented a paper to the American Society of Mechanical Engineers entitled “Process Charts: First Steps in Finding the One Best Way to Do Work” — an excellent title by any standards, and something that turned a lot of businesses onto the idea of modeling their processes so they can optimize them. Gilbreth, the paper’s author, is probably better known as the author and central character of the 1950s novel Cheaper by the Dozen. While I’ve never read it, it amused me to find it that an industrial engineer-turnedmanagement consultant wrote a novel with time and motion study as an underlying theme. Gilbreth was an interesting character, but also a man laser-focused on exactly what processes are for: finding the one best way to do work.
The basic theory of business process mapping Why do you need to map business processes? According to Gilbreth, it’s because you need to take stock of your processes before you can begin to improve them. By looking at the big picture, you can see the cause and effect of each step and start to understand the process flow properly.
“Every detail of a process is more or less affected by every other detail; therefore the entire process must be presented in such form that it can be visualized all at once before any changes are made in any of its subdivisions” — Gilbreth
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