Resource Requirements in Business Process Modelling from an Operations Management Perspective

Operations management entails the design and control of business operations with the goal of providing goods and services as efficiently as possible. Usually various resources are required to conduct operations and the required resources are usually limited in numbers and availability. Business process models supporting operations management should aid in effectively using available resources, identifying process inefficiencies, and enabling appropriate action if resources are unavailable or cannot operate as required. In this work we show how typical resource requirements found in operations management can be included in business process models and propose BPMN 2.0 compatible modelling patterns for describing resource requirements based on the concepts of requests and releases. We discuss various modelling requirements from an operations management perspective and discuss how request-release modelling patterns can be used for different application cases.