MODULE DESIGNING
Assignment 1 Using Signavio draw a BPMN model for the following business process for completing vehicle repair at MetalWorks. A build-to-order (BTO) process, also known as make-to-order process, is an order-to-cash process where the products to be sold are manufactured on the basis of a confirmed purchase order. In other words, the manufacturer does not maintain any ready-to-ship products in their stock. Instead, the products are manufactured on demand when the customer orders them. This approach is used in the context of customized products, such as metallurgical products, where customers often submit orders for products with very specific requirements. We consider a BTO process at a company called MetalWorks. The process starts when MetalWorks receives a purchase order (PO) from one of its customers. This PO is called the “customer PO”. The customer PO may contain one or multiple line items. Each line item refers to a different product. Upon receiving a customer PO, a sales officer checks the PO to determine if all the line items in the order can be produced within the timeframes indicated in the PO. As a result of this check, the sales officer may either confirm the customer PO or ask the customer to revise the terms of the PO (for example: change the delivery date to a later date). In some extreme cases, the sales officer may reject the PO, but this happens very rarely. If the customer is asked to revise the PO, the BTO process will be put in “stand-by” until the customer submits a revised PO. The sales officer will then check the revised PO and accept it, reject it, or ask again the customer to make further changes. However, the sales officer has been instructed to accept changes to the PO up to three times, after which the PO must be escalated to a senior sales officer, who can either accept the further changes one more time, or reject the PO altogether. Once a PO is confirmed, the sales officer creates one “work order” for each line item in the customer PO. In other words, one customer PO gives place to multiple work orders (one per line item). The work order is a document that allows employees at MetalWorks to keep track of the manufacturing of a product requested by a customer. In order to manufacture a product, multiple raw materials are required. Some of these raw materials are maintained in stock in the warehouse of MetalWorks, but others need to be sourced from one or multiple suppliers. Accordingly, each work order is examined by a production engineer. The production engineer determines which raw materials are required in order to fulfill the work order. The production engineer annotates the work order with a list of required raw materials. Each raw material listed in the work order is later checked by a procurement officer. The procurement officer determines whether the required raw material is available in stock or it has to be ordered by accessing the specific catalog for that product line. If the material has to be ordered, the procurement officer consults the suppliers database, selects one or more suitable suppliers for the raw material and sends a request for quote to the selected suppliers. If more than one supplier is identified, the procurement officer selects the best quote out of the first three quotes received from the suppliers (the other quotes, if they arrive, are discarded), and emits a “material PO” for the selected supplier. This material PO is a PO for a raw material and is different from the customer PO. A material PO is a PO sent by MetalWorks to one of its suppliers, whereas a customer PO is a PO received by MetalWorks from one of its customers. Once all materials required to fulfill a work order are available, the production can start. The responsibility for the production of a work order is assigned to the same production engineer who previously examined the work order. The production engineer is responsible for scheduling the production. Once the product has been manufactured, it is checked by a quality inspector. Sometimes, the quality inspector finds a defect in the product and reports it to the production engineer. The production engineer then decides whether: (i) the product should undergo a minor fix; or (ii) the product should be discarded and manufactured again. Once the production has completed, the product is shipped to the customer. There is no need to wait until all the line items requested in a customer PO are ready before shipping them. As soon as a product is ready, it can be shipped to the corresponding customer. At any point in time before the shipment of the product, the customer may send a “cancel order” message for a given PO. When this happens, the sales officer determines if the order can still be canceled, and if so, whether or not the customer should pay a penalty. If the order can be canceled without penalty, all the work related to that order is stopped and the customer is notified that the cancelation has been successful. If the customer needs to pay a penalty, the sales officer first asks the customer if they accept to pay the cancelation penalty. If the customer accepts to pay the cancelation penalty, the order is canceled and all work related to the order is stopped. Otherwise, the work related to the order continues. Assessment 1: Instructions and Marking Criteria Please find below detailed instructions about your first assessment task for this unit, as well as the marking criteria (or rubric) that will be used to mark your work. These provide clarity about the assignment and are designed to help you complete the assignment as required. The assignment is to be submitted by 12th April 1130pm using the link provided below. This is an individual project. The assignment must be submitted as a single PDF document. Detailed submission instructions will be provided in time. The lecturer will arrange a meeting or discussion with you if he has concerns about the model. You must be able to demonstrate a deep understanding of Signavio and BPMN if required. The marking will follow the quality guidelines discussed in your lecture: Process Model Marking Guide Syntactic - 30 marks follows BPMN rules Structural and behavioural Correctness Semantic 30 marks Reflects reality – relevant, correct Pragmatic 30 marks Usability – for understandability, learning, maintainability Guidelines: G1: Use as few elements in the model as possible. The size of a process model has undesirable effects on the understanding of process model and the likelihood of syntactical errors. Studies have shown that larger models tend to be more difficult to understand and have a higher error rate. G2: Minimize the routing paths per element. For each element in a process model, it is possible to determine the number of incoming and outgoing arcs. This summed figure gives an idea of the routing paths through such an element. A high number makes it harder to understand the model. Also, the number of syntactical errors in a model seems strongly correlated to the use of model elements with high numbers of routing paths. G3: Use one start and limited end events. Empirical studies have established that the number of start and end events is positively connected with an increase in error probability. Models satisfying this requirement are easier to understand and allow for all kinds of formal analysis. G4: Model as structured as possible. A process model is structured if each split gateway matches a respective join gateway of the same type. Block-structured models can be seen as formulas with balanced brackets, i.e., every opening bracket has a corresponding closing bracket of the same type . Unstructured models are not only more likely to include errors, people also tend to understand them less easily. Nonetheless, as discussed in Chap. 4.3, it is sometimes not possible or not desirable to turn an unstructured process model fragment (e.g. an unstructured cycle) into a structured one. This is why this guideline states “as structured as possible”. G5: Avoid OR-gateways. Models that have only AND-gateways and XOR-gateways are less error-prone. This empirical finding is apparently related to the fact that the combinations of choices represented by an OR-split are more difficult to grasp than behavior captured by other gateways. G6: Use verb-object activity labels. A wide exploration of labeling styles that are used in actual process models, discloses the existence of a number of popular styles. From these, people consider the verb-object style, like “Inform complainant”, as significantly less ambiguous and more useful than action-noun labels (e.g. “Complaint analysis”) or labels that follow neither of these styles (e.g. “Incident agenda”). G7: Decompose a model with more than 30 elements. This guideline relates to G1 that is motivated by a positive correlation between size and errors. For models with a more than 30 elements the error probability tends to climb sharply. Therefore, large models should be split up into smaller models. For example, large sub-components with a single entry and a single exit can be replaced by one activity that points to the original sub-component as a sub-process.