Business process simulation using soft systems modelling

The Boardman Soft Systems Methodology [BSSM] (1993) is able to create soft system models (represented by systemigrams) which clearly show the interaction between humans and their responsibilities and influences within a system. These models are semantic networks which graphically show the key entities in a system and their inter-relationships between these entities. Systemigrams are a both hard and soft systems (hard systems being well defined and containing many physical entities (e.g. documents), soft systems being ill defined with many conceptual entities (e.g. boundary, ideas)). The soft models are used for education, discussion and debate; the hard models may also be used for this, but also lend themselves well to simulation because of their hard structure. Both hard and soft systemigram models are human-centred and clearly show the roles and interaction of the key people associated with the system being examined.