A travel agency organizes trips. To organize a trip the following tasks are executed. • First the customer request is registered, then an employee searches for opportunities which are communicated to the customer. Then the customer is contacted to find out whether (s)he is still interested and whether more alternatives are desired. • If the customer selects a trip, then the trip is booked. In parallel (if desired) one or two types of insurance are prepared. • Two weeks before the start date the documents are sent to the customer. • It is possible that the customer cancels the trip at any time before the start date. E. Pelz M2 ISIAD MPW 1
Exercise 3 Complaints Handling (Exercise workflow process definitions) Each year travel agency Y has to process a lot of complaints (about 10. 000). There is a special department for the processing of complaints (department C). There is also an internal department called logistics (department L) which takes care of the registration of incoming complaints and the archiving of processed complaints. The following procedure is used to handle these complaints. An employee of department L first registers every incoming complaint. After registration a form is sent to the customer with questions about the nature of the complaint. This is done by an employee of department C. There are two possibilities: the customer returns the form within two weeks or not. If the form is returned, it is processed automatically resulting in a report which can be used for the actual processing of the complaint.
If the form is not returned on time, a time-out occurs resulting in an empty report. Note that this does not necessarily mean that the complaint is discarded. After registration, i. e., in parallel with the form handling, the preparation for the actual processing is started. First, the complaint is evaluated by a complaint manager of department C. Evaluation shows that either further processing is needed or not. Note that this decision does not depend on the form handling. If no further processing is required and the form is handled, the complaint is archived. If further processing is required, an employee of the complaints department executes the task ‘ process complaint’ (this is the actual processing where certain actions are proposed if needed). For the actual processing of the complaint, the report resulting from the form handling is used. Note that the report can be empty. The result of task ´process complaint´ is checked by a complaint manager. If the result is not OK, task ´process complaint´ is executed again. This is repeated until the result is acceptable. If the result is accepted, an employee of the department C executes the proposed actions. After this the processed complaint is archived by an employee of department L. Give the process, i. e., model the workflow by making a process definition in terms of a Petri net.
Insurance Company
(Exercise workflow process definitions)
Insurance company X processes claims which result from traffic accidents with cars where customers of X are involved in. Therefore, it uses the following procedure for the processing of the insurance claims. Every claim, reported by a customer, is registered by an employee of department CD (CD = Car Damages). After the registration of the claim, the insurance claim is classified by a claim handler of rank A or B within CD. There are two categories: simple and complex claims. For simple claims two tasks need to be executed: check insurance and phone garage. These tasks are independent of each other. The complex claims require three tasks to be executed: check insurance, check damage history and phone garage. These tasks need to be executed sequentially in the order specified. Both for the simple and complex claims, the tasks are done by employees of department CD.
After executing the two respectively three tasks a decision is made. This decision is made by a claim handler of rank A and has two possible outcomes: OK (positive) or NOK (negative). If the decision is positive, then insurance company X will pay. An employee of the finance department handles the payment. In any event, the insurance company sends a letter to the customer who sent the claim. An employee of the department CD writes this letter. Model the workflow by making a process definition in terms of a Petri net using the techniques introduced in this chapter. Exercise 5 Insurance Company Consider the insurance company described in Exercise 4 a) Make a resource classification with relations between roles (qualifications) and groups (organizational units). b) Assign a role and a group to each task in the process model.
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Exercise 5 Insurance Company Consider the insurance company described in Exercise 4 a) Make a resource classification with relations between roles (qualifications) and groups (organizational units). b) Assign a role and a group to each task in the process model.
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Solution: The following roles are identified: Employee Claim handler Claim handler A Claim handler B (E) (CH) (CHA) (CHB)
The following organizational units are identified: Department Car Damages Finance Department . (CD) (FN)
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Figure 5a: Resource classification insurance company
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We make the assumption that all claim handlers are also employees. This means that when an employee of the Car Damages department is required for a task, it doesn’t matter whether he or she is a claim handler or not. If we make the assumption that claim handlers cannot do the task of an “ ordinary” employee, then Figure 5. a needs to be adapted (CH, CHA, and CHB are outside E). If we combine the resource classification with the process model, we will obtain the model shown in Figure 5. b.
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Figure 5. b: Resource classification in model insurance company
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Exercise 6 Complaints Handling Consider the complaints handling process described in Exercise 3 a) Make a resource classification with relations between roles (qualifications) and groups (organizational units). b) Assign a role and a group to each task in the process model.
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Solution: Employee
The following roles are identified: (E) (CM)
Complaint manager
The following organizational units are identified: Department C Logistics department (DC) (LD)
Then we (also) made the assumption that the complaint manager is also an employee. This means that he is also available for work that could be done by an employee.
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Exercise 6 suite : Complaints Handling Consider the complaints handling process described in Exercise 3 a) Make a resource classification with relations between roles (qualifications) and groups (organizational units). b) Assign a role and a group to each task in the process model. Solution: Employee (E) , The following roles are identified: Complaint manager (CM)
The following organizational units are identified: Department C (DC),
Logistics department (LD)
Then we (also) made the assumption that the complaint manager is also an employee. This means that he is also available for work that could be done by an employee. Now combine the resource classification with the process model. Figure 6. a: Resource classification complaints handling
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Figure 6. b: Resource classification in model complaints handling
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Figure 6. b: Resource classification in model complaints handling
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Exercise 7 Employments Office Agency “ Job Shop” accepts requests for new employees by companies all over the country. Requests can be sent by e-mail, by mail or by phone to one of the agencies in Eindhoven and Leeuwarden. Handling these requests is a job for someone of Business Relations (BR). For the Eindhoven agency this job is done by Johan, in Leeuwarden Sietse is responsible for BR. The first thing being done is sending an acknowledgement back to indicate that the request has been received. Then “ Job Shop” has several options: they always look in their database to find suitable people, but they can also place an advertisement in some of the greater papers in the country to ask for people as well. Placing an ad is a job for Public Relations (PR): Jaap and Anke in Eindhoven, Rinske in Leeuwarden. The Manager decides whether or not this option should be used.
Being a manager is a job fulfilled by Ahmed (Eindhoven) and Dion (Leeuwarden). The actual searching in the database is done by someone of Recruitment. All candidates for the job get a marking that will be used later. People who react to the ad can do this by phone, by completing a form (found at Internet) or by dropping a letter with their data at the office. Someone from Recruitment processes the data in the form/letter by adding it to the database and by marking candidates for the job. If someone uses the phone, a member from Recruitment will interview this person to get his/her data for the database. Again, a marking is placed if the person fits the requirements for the job. The Eindhoven Recruitment-team is formed by Annelies, Manja and the people of both PR and BR. In Leeuwarden Anja, Hakan, Rinske (also PR) and Sietse (also BR) take care of new people.
After some time, the deadline for the job expires and a candidate has to be chosen from the ones marked in the database. Reactions to the ad, if placed, will not be processed anymore from then on. One by one, the candidates will be called by someone of the Recruitment-team until someone has been found. In this call, they get an invitation to come to the office to discuss the possible new job. Of course people can refuse to come. However, if someone agrees to come to the office, an appointment is made and he or she gets an interview with one of the employees (Recruitment) of “ Job Shop”. Immediately after this interview an evaluation is made and the candidate is told whether or not (s)he will be chosen.
If no candidate can be found, or when no one is suitable for the job, a letter is sent to the company. Once someone has been chosen, he/she gets a letter with all data needed to prepare for the new job. This letter is composed by someone of Recruitment. Also, a letter is sent by BR to the company for which the new employee has been found. In this, all relevant data concerning the new employee is listed. Of course, the database will have to be updated in order to reflect the new status of this person. This is done after sending the letters, by the same person of Recruitment that sent the letter. Maintenance of the database in both agencies is done by Mahroud, the IT Specialist. a) Make a resource classification with relations between roles (qualifications) and groups (organizational units). b) Construct a process model of the process sketched above.
Solution: a) The following roles and (PR) (BR) (RC) (MA) (IT) organizational units are identified : Job Shop Eindhoven Leeuwarden (JS) (EH) (LW)
Public Relations Business Relations Recruitment Manager IT-specialist
This results in the model shown in Figure 7. a.
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Figure 7. a: Resource classification employment agency
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b) Figure 7. b shows the process model. It is important to add the right triggers. The time trigger added to task stop_processing for instance is crucial to keep the flow going on and prevents cases residing forever in place wait.