This article was written as one of the outputs of the research project entitled ‘IAAP – Intelligenza Artificiale per le Attività Produttive’, which was conducted at the "Group Service Energy S.p.A" of Taranto that operates in various industrial sectors specialized in the construction and assembly of components for various types of plants. The study was conceived as part of an industrial research work was carried out between 2017 and 2018.
Enterprise 4.0 is a phenomenon that is affecting the global evolution of the business economy.
This wave will go to condition the business concept with issues such as artificial intelligence, robotics, analysis, data, prediction, knowledge engineering, virtual reality and digital web innovations like the IoT.
In fact, these technologies can have an impact on the business by providing suitable solutions in different areas such as: smart city, traffic congestion, security, emergency services, logistics, retail sales, industrial control, health care, etc.
Continuous monitoring of an organization's processes helps identify critical points and improve overall operations and economic results. For example, the optimization of activities has become a necessity for companies that identify in the reduction of costs the basis for the maintenance of their competitive capacity.
An approach of what has just been said in the introduction is:
1. 1. a feasibility study;
2. 2. the current situation, called "AS-IS";
3. 3. the desired future situation, called "AS-TO-BE"
The processes of an organization are a set of activities connected to each other and aimed at achieving a common goal.
An optimal process can be defined as a set of activities that maximizes profits and / or minimizes costs, satisfying both the customer's expectations and the technological and organizational constraints of the company.
A correct use of optimization techniques allows to guarantee a set of qualitative and quantitative advantages that generally translate into higher levels of productivity and / or service and a better use of resources.
The language for the conventional process modeling is the Business Process Model Notation BPMN (defined by the Object Management Group), it can be used for the modeling of business processes.
BPMN is a framework rather than a real language, because every expression is not managed by the standard, but left to the process designer. An effective technique to describe the processes is the development and compilation of BPMN diagrams, to describe both the current status of the "AS-IS" business processes and the "AS-TO-BE" phase with the description of the future or expected status.
There are different BPMN tools used for the simulation of business processes with different functionalities:
1) draw packages with models;
2) draw packages with models and some functions similar to spreadsheets;
3) Heavy BPA tools, similar to discrete event simulators.
During the research project the AHP method was used to evaluate the available methodologies and the results are shown in the following table.
BPM projects are generally set up to improve business performance in order to better meet strategic objectives of the organization.
The figure shows a summary of the comparison of different methodologies for the optimization of the tools available on the market.
The comparison was performed on different functionalities but the following are the main ones: description, approach and quality oriented.
In some methodologies analyzed (Lean Management) we find the people at the center of the optimization change, in others the processes (Lean Manufacturing, Six Sigma), in others still both (BPM, Kaizen, TQM).
It is fundamental to get to know the corporate processes of an organization (process mapping).
Description Approach Quality oriented
BPM BPR intends to deep change business processes and creating something new Drastic and radical change x
Lean Production Lean is a methodology suitable towards production processes. Lean Manufacturing focuses on processes and activities while the successor Lean Management places great emphasis on human resources gradual improvement x
Kaizen Kaizen is the methodology of Continuous Process Improvement
gradual improvement x
Six Sigma Six Sigma is a tool for measuring the quality which drives towards perfection gradual improvement x
TQM TQM is a business philosophy which has as its goal satisfaction actors involved in the process at every stage of the business gradual improvement x
Exist methods for optimizing business processes through the adoption IT applications.
Expert IT systems or MES systems have the following characteristics:
• contains Business Intelligence tools;
• contains decision support models (DSS);
• contains the procedures necessary to solve problems as experienced users.
A Decision Support System (DSS) can be defined as a system able to provide clear information to users, the system, in fact, analyses and describes in detail an activity or process to allow the user to easily make appropriate decisions on actions to be taken.
Thanks to the support of Artificial Intelligence (AI), a technological system has the ability to solve problems, perform tasks and activities typical of the mind and human skills.
The system MES can actively contribute to an overall improvement in the quality of production and supply-chain, with a consequent improvement of the service to the final customer and of the relationship of trust between company and clients. The main goal of a MES system is to ensure effective execution of the manufacturing operations and improve production output. MES works in real time to enable the control of multiple elements of the production process (e.g. inputs, personnel, machines and support services).
MES systems, almost always, are multitier client-server or web-based, use relational databases, and are multiplatform. They provide APIs to facilitate integration to other applications, such as ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning), supply chain management (SCM) and customer relationship management (CRM).
A brief overview of approaches for process management has been presented in this work. Industry 4.0 involves the whole value chain of an organization's processes. The most recent trends deal with process optimization by means of expert systems for the intelligent management of production and processes. The road to smart enterprises is traced thanks to the use of expert systems for optimizing business process management.
The use of a software system allows to reduce costs, improves the management of its assets and achieves extraordinary efficiency improvements of the entire supply chain for the management of processes in any industrial sector and at any level of complexity. The introduction of an expert system (e.g. MES) cannot be separated from an analysis of business processes, business objectives and the peculiarities of the specific production process. For this reason, it is necessary first of all to map the production processes. This approach highlights opportunities for improvement to make procedures more functional and to possibly change existing practices. In this way it will be possible to clarify the functionalities of an organization for the development of an information system necessary for the specific case.
Therefore, the omnipresence of the Internet of Things (IoT), use of expert systems and advances in artificial intelligence (AI) have spurred many companies to radically rethink their workflows and make technology-driven changes. In the future, it's expected that business process reengineering will continue to be part and parcel of most business transformation and enterprise resource planning initiatives.
