NAWCWPNS Procurement Process Architecture

Final Report

July 1996

Walt Scacchi, Mark Nissen, and John Noll
ATRIUM Laboratory,
Information and Operations Management Dept.,
School of Business Administration,
University of Southern California.
213-740-4782, 213-740-8494 (fax)
(Scacchi@gilligan.usc.edu).

Preparation of the report and the research that preceding it were supported under a grant from the Office of Naval Research, N00014-94-0889. No endorsements implied.

Overview

Background and Definitions

Meta-Modeling

Definition and Modeling

Analysis

Simulation

Visualization

Prototyping, Walkthrough, and Training

Process Measurement and Diagnosis

Process Redesign and Evaluatiion

Next Steps and Future Directions

Integration: Data and Systems

Target Support Environment Generation

Instantiation and Enactment

Enactment History Capture and Replay

Conclusions

A paper providing an overall description of our process engineering life cycle can be found at http://www.usc.edu/dept/ATRIUM/Papers/Business_Process_Modeling.ps.

Background and Definitions

Strategic Issues

High performance work organization and empowerment
Efficient and effective business (procurement) process redesign and management
- Cycle time and cost reduction
- Agile response
- Measurable process quality and performance
- On-demand performance support ("just-in-training")

Exploit emerging national information infrastructure (Internet/WWW) for EDI, Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT), or Electronic Commerce (EC).

Tactical Problems

How to best support people who work on dynamic individual, group/team, and organizational assignments?
How to model and redesign resources (work products, processes, organization, and information infrastructure) using a common representation?
How to inter-relate products to processes to organizations to information infrastructure?
How to integrate heterogeneous product data, tools/information systems, data repositories?
How to accomodate wide-area resource distribution and organizational autonomy?

Solution:

Near-term

Apply process engineering techniques and tools to analyze and identify procurement process redesign opportunities.
Identify and transfer techniques, experiences, and lessons learned.

Longer-Term

Transition to a knowledge-based distributed hypertext (KB-WWW) infrastructure that supports the modeling, inter-relationship, integration, and accomodation of resources and people within local/global virtual procurement and acquisition organizations.

Definitions:

Our focus in targeted at the engineering of complex business processes or capabilities across their life cycle.
A capability represents the products, processes, organization staffing, and information infrastructure, as well as their interrelationships, for a recurring business activity.
The web of relationships among the objects and attributes of a product, process, organization, infrastructure, or total capability defines its architecture.

A paper providing an exemplary description of a software development capability architecture can be found at http://www.usc.edu/dept/ATRIUM/Papers/Process_Meta_Model.ps.

Return to Overview

Sources of Experiences Encountered

Anderson Consulting
AT&T Bell Laboratories
CoGenTex
EDS
Hewlett-Packard
HoloSoFx (formerly Active Management Inc.)
McKesson Water Products Co.
Naval Air Warfare Center (China Lake, CA)
Northrop(-Grumann) B-2 Division
SUN Microsystems Computer Corp
Perceptronics

Return to Overview

The process/capability life cycle follows.

Meta-Modeling

Constructing and refining a process concept vocabulary and logic (an ontology) for representing families of capabilities, processes, and their instances in terms of object classes, attributes, relations, constraints, control flow, rules, and computational methods.

Experience: key to achieving process-level interoperability.

Image files that show user interface displays of (a) a meta-model class hierarchy we use, and (b) a meta-model schema for the "task-force" class can be viewed when selected.

A paper providing a more detailed description of meta-modeling can be found at http://www.usc.edu/dept/ATRIUM/Papers/Process_Meta_Model.ps.

Return to Overview

Definition and Modeling

Eliciting and capturing of informal process descriptions, and their conversion into formal process models or process model instances.

Experience: Most "as-is" processes are ill-defined and not well understood.
Experience: Most process redesign efforts want to primarily focus on "to-be" alternatives, without baselining as-is processes.

Image files that show views of the NAWCWPNS Procurement Process Architecture can be found at the following locations:

Organization: The generic organizational capability for Procurement differs considerably across a range of organizations; however, nearly every organization shares common aspects of procurement activities.

Product: The procurement product decomposition reveals the source of substantial variety within the NAWCWPNS Procurement Capability.

Technology: The technology decomposition reveals some of the information systems employed in the NAWCWPNS Procurement Process, including APADE (which is being superseded/upgraded), and for EDI, SPEDI. We also suggest examining the Internet-based electronic commerce capability of FAST at USC-ISI, which might be adopted for future use.

Process: The process decomposition outlines some of the important process elements of procurement at NAWCWPNS, including BankCard (which involves outsourced procurement), SPEDI (which involves electronic data interchange between NAWCWPNS and its vendors), and Large Negotiated Procurement (LNP) (which contains both the request for proposal (RFP) and Justification and Approval (J&A)
as lower-level subprocesses).

Return to Overview

J&A Process

Image files that show views of the NAWCWPNS Justification and Approval (J&A) Process can be found at the following locations:

Level 1: The process includes five activities or task chains and one quality feedback loop.

Level 2 - Customer Assistance: The Customer Assistance process includes three activities and one quality feedback loop.

Level 2 - Approvals: The Approvals process includes five task chains, one branch, and five quality feedback loops; each of the five task chains contains a nested quality feedback loop.

Return to Overview

RFP Process

Image files that show views of the NAWCWPNS Request for Proposal (RFP) Process can be found at the following locations:

Level 1: This process includes seven activities or task chains, one branch, and one quality feedback loop.

Level 2: This RFP Synopsis process includes four activities or task chains and one quality feedback loop.

Level 2: This RFP Draft process includes five activities or task chains, one branch, and one quality feedback loop.

Return to Overview

LNP Process

Image files that show views of the NAWCWPNS Large Negotiated Procurement (LNP) Process can be found at the following locations:

Level 1: This process includes four activities or task chains.

Level 2: This LNP PrePalt process includes two activities or task chains, including the ARP subprocess, within which the J&A can be found.

Level 2: This LNP PreAward process includes four activities or task chains, including the RFP subprocess.

Return to Overview

Analysis

Evaluating static and dynamic properties of a process model, including its consistency, completeness, internal correctness, traceability, as well as other semantic checks.

Experience: Best source of high-value, short-term results and payoffs.
Experience: Easy to produce management reports or presentation materials.

Image files that show user interface displays of (a) a sample of process model analysis checks, (b) process model analysis statistics, and (c) process model analysis view, can be viewed when selected.

Return to Overview

Simulation:

Knowledge-Based

Symbolically enacting process models in order to determine the path and flow of intermediate state transitions in ways that can be made persistent, replayed, queried, dynamically analyzed, and reconfigured into multiple alternative scenarios.

Experience: High-value technology is infrequently used.
Experience: Can produce narrative summaries of simulation runs.

Image files that show user interface displays of (a) a process model simulation interaction, and a subsequent (b) a process model simulation interaction can be viewed when selected.

A paper describing the initial design and implementation of this simulation mechanism can be found in, P. Mi and W. Scacchi, "A Knowledge-Based Environment for Modeling and Simulating Software Engineering Processes," IEEE Trans. Knowledge and Data Engineering, Vol. 2(3), 283-294, (1990). Reprinted in Nikkei Artificial Intelligence, Vol. 20(1), 176-191, (1991, in Japanese).

Discrete-Event

Computationally enacting a sample of process models as network flows with hueristic or statistical arrival rates and service times so as to determine the overall process performance envelope, throughput, systematic behavior, and resource bottlenecks.

Experience: Although less flexible, easy to use to discover process optimizations.
Experience: Visual interactions and presentations always impress.

Image files that show user interface displays of a discrete-event process model workflow simulation for the Baseline J&A Process can be displayed on this link.

Return to Overview

Visualization

Providing users with graphic views of process models and instances that can be viewed, navigationally traversed, interactively editted, and animated to convey process statics and dynamics.

Experience: Process visualizations enable intuitive analysis and discovery.
Experience: Visualization appears key to acceptability.

Image files that show user interface displays of (a) visual process model editor, (b) spreadsheet-like process browser, (c) graphical process model browser, and (d) graphical process object browser can be viewed when selected.

Return to Overview

Prototyping, Walkthrough, and Performance Support (Training On Demand)

Incrementally enacting partially specified process model instances in order to evaluate process presentation scenarios to end users, prior to performing tool and data integration.

Experience: Process prototyping and walkthrough is effective enabler for eliciting user feedback.
Experience: Can provide a basis for user empowerment in controlling design and improvement of local processes.
Experience: Generation of performance support materials in response to process improvements or changes is well-received.

Image files that show user interface displays of (a) a process prototype or walkthrough display, and (b) a web of automatically generated (in HTML format) process performance support materials that document the J&A capability can be browsed when selected.

Return to Overview

Process Measurement and Diagnosis

Process measurement is central to process redesign.
Process measures can be qualitative, quantative, or calculated (e.g., as ratios of one measure to another, or as computed derivatives).
A report on procurement process measurement can be reviewed for an introduction.
Experience: Higher-order process quality measures such as customer satisfaction or quality improvement are best determined using computed derivatives.
The following tables pertain to baseline and calculated measures for the classic J&A Process.

J&A Process Measurement
Static Structure

Measure Value

Steps 31

Length 31

Breadth 1

Depth 4

Atomics 11

Branches 1

Iterations 11

J&A Process Measurement
Static Organization

Measure Value

Organizational Roles 8

Value Chains 3

Department Handoffs 6

IT-supported activities 1

IT-supported comm. 0

J&A Process Measurement
Static Derived

Measure Value Diagnostic

Footprint 44 Small Process

Parallelism 1.00* Linear Flow

Feedback Ratio 0.35 Complexity

Handoff Ratio 0.19 Departmental

IT-A Ratio 0.03 Manual Work

IT-C Ratio 0.00* Paper Communication

Return to Overview

Process Redesign and Evaluation

Process measurements and domain-independent (re)design heuristics can be used to envision a number of redesign alternatives.
A simulation interface screen depicting one redesign alternative for the J&A Process - R1: Joint Review Meetings, can be seen here.
The development and application of domain-dependent and instance-specific measures and heuristics is expected to produce more specific redesign alternatives, such as those shown here or below (with simulation results that forecast process cycletime reductions).

Process Redesign Cycletime Reductions:
Simulation Forecast

Redesign Alternative Time Reduction

J&A Joint Reviews 67%

J&A Workflow System 67%

RFP Joint Reviews 22%

RFP Workflow System 28%

RFP Expert Review System 33%

RFP Composition KBS 67%

LCP Workflow System 21%

LCP Composition KBS 55%

LCP EDI-FAST 21-59%

Experience: Redesign hueristics often produce differing improvements when applied to different processes. This means that we should not expect a single hueristic to equally improve all processes to which it is applied.

A paper describing our approach to process measurement as the basis for guiding process redesign can be found at http://www.usc.edu/dept/ATRIUM/Papers/Process_Measurement.ps.

Return to Overview

Next Steps and Future Directions

Return to Overview

Integration: Data, Tool, User Interface

Encapsulating or wrapping new/legacy procurement information systems, repositories, and data objects that are to be invoked or manipulated when performing a procurement instance.

A conceptual approach and system architecture that displays this can be found in a short presentation here.
Experience: Can entail a lot of difficult technical work, but its relatively easy to construct "concept demo's."
Experience: Growing interest in providing support for integration of wide-area heterogeneous information repositories using the Internet.
Growing number of vendors are offering services and COTS products that enable the integration of in-house information systems and databases with WWW-based browsers (as user interface to corporate intranet)

Image files that show user interface displays of (a) a to-do list, status, and tool associated with process actions that are integrated for use over the Internet.

A paper describing the mechanisms support data repository integration and a conceptual approach to procurement process enactment over the Internet can be found at http://www.usc.edu/dept/ATRIUM/Papers/VE_Procurement.ps.
A paper describing the strategy and mechanisms supporting process integration can be found in the paper, P. Mi and W. Scacchi, "Process Integration for CASE Environments," IEEE Software, Vol. 9(2), 45-53 (1992). Reprinted in Computer-Aided Software Engineering, 2nd. Edition, E. Chikofsky (ed.), IEEE Computer Society, (1993).

Return to Overview

Target Support Environment Generation

Automatically transforming a process model or instance into a process-based computing environment that selectively presents prototyped or integrated information systems to end-users for process enactment.

Experience: Considered a unique capability, not available in other process environments.
Experience: Simplifies or eliminates low-level process programming via "application generator" techniques.

Image files that show user interface displays of (a) process-encapsulated tool environment that was generated via automated transformation of the modeled and integrated process.

A description of this mechanism can be found in the paper P.K. Garg, P. Mi, T. Pham, W. Scacchi, and G. Thunquest, "The SMART Approach to Software Process Engineering," Proc. 16th. Intern. Conf. Software Engineering,, IEEE Computer Society, Sorrento, Italy, 341-350, (1994).

Return to Overview

Instantiation and Enactment

Performing the modeled process using the environment by a process engine that guides or enforces specified users or user roles to enact the process as planned.

Return to Overview

Enactment History Capture and Replay

Graphically simulating the re-enactment of a process, in order to more readily observe process state transitions or to intuitively detect possible process enactment anomalies.

Experience: Visualizing and replaying process enactment histories is well-received by managers and executives.
Experience: Supports "organizational drill-down" when process anomalies are observed.

An image file that shows a user interface display of (a) process enactment event history and timing measurements can be viewed when selected.

Return to Overview

Conclusions

Business process engineering in general, and procurement process engineering in particular, is a dynamic team-based endeavor that can lead to mature, streamlined processes through:

understanding existing processes,
measuring and diagnozing process structure and throughput,
simulating or prototyping of process redesign alternatives,
incremental development, iterative refinement, and the reengineering of ad hoc process task instances and models.

Process/capability engineering may be most likely to succeed when focused on high frequency, short duration cycle time, or high velocity processes.

Return to Top

This interactive presentation page is maintained by Walt Scacchi who can be reached at the e-mail address noted above. This page was last updated on 30 June 1996.

J&A Process Measurement Static Structure
Measure	Value
Steps	31
Length	31
Breadth	1
Depth	4
Atomics	11
Branches	1
Iterations	11

J&A Process Measurement Static Organization
Measure	Value
Organizational Roles	8
Value Chains	3
Department Handoffs	6
IT-supported activities	1
IT-supported comm.	0

J&A Process Measurement Static Derived
Measure	Value	Diagnostic
Footprint	44	Small Process
Parallelism	1.00*	Linear Flow
Feedback Ratio	0.35	Complexity
Handoff Ratio	0.19	Departmental
IT-A Ratio	0.03	Manual Work
IT-C Ratio	0.00*	Paper Communication

Process Redesign Cycletime Reductions: Simulation Forecast
Redesign Alternative	Time Reduction

J&A Joint Reviews	67%
J&A Workflow System	67%

RFP Joint Reviews	22%
RFP Workflow System	28%
RFP Expert Review System	33%
RFP Composition KBS	67%

LCP Workflow System	21%
LCP Composition KBS	55%
LCP EDI-FAST	21-59%

Final Report

A paper providing an overall description of our process engineering life cycle can be found at http://www.usc.edu/dept/ATRIUM/Papers/Business_Process_Modeling.ps.

Near-term

Longer-Term

A paper providing an exemplary description of a software development capability architecture can be found at http://www.usc.edu/dept/ATRIUM/Papers/Process_Meta_Model.ps.

Sources of Experiences Encountered

Anderson Consulting AT&T Bell Laboratories CoGenTex EDS Hewlett-Packard HoloSoFx (formerly Active Management Inc.) McKesson Water Products Co. Naval Air Warfare Center (China Lake, CA) Northrop(-Grumann) B-2 Division SUN Microsystems Computer Corp Perceptronics

The process/capability life cycle follows.

Image files that show user interface displays of (a) a meta-model class hierarchy we use, and (b) a meta-model schema for the "task-force" class can be viewed when selected.

A paper providing a more detailed description of meta-modeling can be found at http://www.usc.edu/dept/ATRIUM/Papers/Process_Meta_Model.ps.

J&A Process

Image files that show views of the NAWCWPNS Justification and Approval (J&A) Process can be found at the following locations:

Level 1: The process includes five activities or task chains and one quality feedback loop. Level 2 - Customer Assistance: The Customer Assistance process includes three activities and one quality feedback loop.

RFP Process

Image files that show views of the NAWCWPNS Request for Proposal (RFP) Process can be found at the following locations:

Level 2: This RFP Synopsis process includes four activities or task chains and one quality feedback loop. Level 2: This RFP Draft process includes five activities or task chains, one branch, and one quality feedback loop.

Level 2: This RFP Draft process includes five activities or task chains, one branch, and one quality feedback loop.

LNP Process

Image files that show views of the NAWCWPNS Large Negotiated Procurement (LNP) Process can be found at the following locations:

Level 2: This LNP PrePalt process includes two activities or task chains, including the ARP subprocess, within which the J&A can be found. Level 2: This LNP PreAward process includes four activities or task chains, including the RFP subprocess. Return to Overview

Level 2: This LNP PreAward process includes four activities or task chains, including the RFP subprocess. Return to Overview

Image files that show user interface displays of (a) a sample of process model analysis checks, (b) process model analysis statistics, and (c) process model analysis view, can be viewed when selected.

Knowledge-Based

Image files that show user interface displays of (a) a process model simulation interaction, and a subsequent (b) a process model simulation interaction can be viewed when selected.

Discrete-Event

Image files that show user interface displays of a discrete-event process model workflow simulation for the Baseline J&A Process can be displayed on this link.

Image files that show user interface displays of (a) visual process model editor, (b) spreadsheet-like process browser, (c) graphical process model browser, and (d) graphical process object browser can be viewed when selected.

Image files that show user interface displays of (a) a process prototype or walkthrough display, and (b) a web of automatically generated (in HTML format) process performance support materials that document the J&A capability can be browsed when selected.

A paper describing our approach to process measurement as the basis for guiding process redesign can be found at http://www.usc.edu/dept/ATRIUM/Papers/Process_Measurement.ps.

Return to Overview

Image files that show user interface displays of (a) a to-do list, status, and tool associated with process actions that are integrated for use over the Internet.

Image files that show user interface displays of (a) process-encapsulated tool environment that was generated via automated transformation of the modeled and integrated process.

A description of this mechanism can be found in the paper P.K. Garg, P. Mi, T. Pham, W. Scacchi, and G. Thunquest, "The SMART Approach to Software Process Engineering," Proc. 16th. Intern. Conf. Software Engineering,, IEEE Computer Society, Sorrento, Italy, 341-350, (1994).

Performing the modeled process using the environment by a process engine that guides or enforces specified users or user roles to enact the process as planned.

An image file that shows a user interface display of (a) process enactment event history and timing measurements can be viewed when selected.

Anderson Consulting
AT&T Bell Laboratories
CoGenTex
EDS
Hewlett-Packard
HoloSoFx (formerly Active Management Inc.)
McKesson Water Products Co.
Naval Air Warfare Center (China Lake, CA)
Northrop(-Grumann) B-2 Division
SUN Microsystems Computer Corp
Perceptronics

Level 2: This RFP Synopsis process includes four activities or task chains and one quality feedback loop.

Level 2: This RFP Draft process includes five activities or task chains, one branch, and one quality feedback loop.

Level 2: This LNP PrePalt process includes two activities or task chains, including the ARP subprocess, within which the J&A can be found.

Level 2: This LNP PreAward process includes four activities or task chains, including the RFP subprocess.

Return to Overview

Level 2: This LNP PreAward process includes four activities or task chains, including the RFP subprocess.

Return to Overview