Supply chains are complex, interorganizational constructions, which can spend multiple continents and companies. A business process is a more detailed view of a single task or objective to be accomplished. Business processes are all about how we get things done, and business process modelling (BPM) is a way of visualizing this process.
“Why should we create models of commonsensical tasks, we know how to do our jobs”, is the first question raised by many who are introduced to BPM. The answer is simply that visualizing helps us understand how things are done. A number of studies show that tweaking and improving business processes is perhaps the most important part of any project aimed at improving the business. By creating models of how a task progresses from initatiton to completion, we can more easily identify weak spots and areas where the process is stalling.
For example, consider something as common as sending a bill to a customer who has recently purchased something. For the sake of clarity, we assume that all bills are on paper and sent in the mail. In order to do that, you need physical items such as envelopes, a printer, paper and stamps. Making sure that all of these things are available is a job by itself. If you have to run to the newsagent and buy envelopes every time you need to send a bill, you will a spend a lot of extra resources (time spent going to the newsagent, envelopes will be more costly than buying in bulk etc).
Second, we need access to information. Name and address of the receiver, the cost of the products she purchased, VAT and tax information and information about wether or not the product has actually been shipped. We also need to handle returns, and to check if the bill has been paid on time. Again, all of this information needs to be collected and verified. A small cottage industry business could manage by looking up the yellow pages, and yelling out the staff working the shelves asking if the product was sent. They could check their account to see if money was received etc. However, as the business grows, this would soon become demanding, and the company would need to look at the way things are done to see if they could be improved. This is where business process modelling comes in. As the example above shows, even a relatively simple process such as sending a bill actually requires many steps and many people when broken down into individual tasks. This is why modelling makes it easier to understand what is happening, and shows us where the process can be improved.