On the Applicability of the Notion of Entropy for Business Process Analysis

Peter De Bruyn, Philip Huysmans, Gilles Oorts, Herwig Mannaert

2012

Abstract

Contemporary organizations need to be able to dynamically adapt, improve and analyze their business processes. While many approaches are available in literature, few of them tend to use typical engineering concepts for this purpose. In this paper, we employ the concept of entropy as defined in statistical thermodynamics to advance the field of business process analysis. After reviewing some existing literature on entropy and its application in business topics, we show how earlier insights from entropy reasoning in Normalized Systems theory may offer opportunities to be applied in business process engineering as well. The necessary entropy concepts are defined in a business process context, entropy occurence in business processes is illustrated and some initial principles for controlling the resulting entropy are discussed. Finally, some implications for both theory and practice (e.g., Service-Oriented Architectures) are reviewed.

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Paper Citation


in Harvard Style

De Bruyn P., Huysmans P., Oorts G. and Mannaert H. (2012). On the Applicability of the Notion of Entropy for Business Process Analysis . In Proceedings of the Second International Symposium on Business Modeling and Software Design - Volume 1: BMSD, ISBN 978-989-8565-26-6, pages 128-137. DOI: 10.5220/0004461901280137


in Bibtex Style

@conference{bmsd12,
author={Peter De Bruyn and Philip Huysmans and Gilles Oorts and Herwig Mannaert},
title={On the Applicability of the Notion of Entropy for Business Process Analysis},
booktitle={Proceedings of the Second International Symposium on Business Modeling and Software Design - Volume 1: BMSD,},
year={2012},
pages={128-137},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0004461901280137},
isbn={978-989-8565-26-6},
}


in EndNote Style

TY - CONF
JO - Proceedings of the Second International Symposium on Business Modeling and Software Design - Volume 1: BMSD,
TI - On the Applicability of the Notion of Entropy for Business Process Analysis
SN - 978-989-8565-26-6
AU - De Bruyn P.
AU - Huysmans P.
AU - Oorts G.
AU - Mannaert H.
PY - 2012
SP - 128
EP - 137
DO - 10.5220/0004461901280137