IAB201 Modelling Techniques for Information Systems

The supply chain is considered as a complex dynamic system and there are many links and objects involved in it. The operating status of the system can be analyzed with the application the traditional qualitative analysis methodology. The Petri net model is applied for two methods where the first method uses the Petri net to create a AS IS model which is close to the practical problems that are understood from the business scenario. The model is high level and thus it can help in understanding the business flow and processes easily (Hu et al., 2020). In the second methodology the former modelling methods are applied and then it is transformed into Petri net analysis. The second methodology can also use a Petri net for building model and apply other methodology for its analysis.  

In this context various of complexity can occur regarding technical and business aspects. The main technical complexity was in the automation of purchase order and matching the supplier invoice and the delivered goods from the supplier. To mitigate this complexity a new system is proposed which checks the inventory and sets a limit for re-ordering the items. A supplier is assigned for each of the items in the inventory and in case the item stock falls below the limit a purchase order is generated and sent to the supplier (Kim, Gangolly & Elsas, 2017). A purchase office is appointed for the management of the purchase order. An estimated delivery data is obtained from the supplier and if the order is not received within the date the purchasing officer contacts the supplier for getting update about the delivery and if the delivery data is delayed beyond expectation the order is canceled.

Analysis of the Petri net System

The main processes which needed to be undertaken for the project consists various of steps. In the first process regarding the project all of the issues that are present in the current order process need to be identified. From this process it has been identified that one of the main problem in this case is regarding the mailed payment method. In this purchase order system order tracking is missing in about 50% of the cases. This deficiency of order tracking does not create any type of problem in the inventory management since the purchasing officer manually takes update about the delivery time of the stock. In the present scenario there is sometimes mismatch of the order that has been given and that has been received from the supplier.

Thus payment which are not having any type of vouchers is checked against outstanding load files which is very much critical. Also, there is a bottleneck in the current existing payment process which creates some additional problems. In this payment process clerical overhead is caused when customers does not pay their outstanding loans for more than ten days against the due date. In this case payment does not get updated in the outstanding loan files until delinquency analysis is run. As the current problem regarding the existing system has been identified now this problems need to be addressed. The project implementation will be started by replacing the existing payment processing system. The project will be completed successfully after upgrading all of the current payment processing system.

Difficulties or limitations of the system

The main change which is required in the business process is the regarding the purchasing order and the payment that is needed to be made to the supplier. The supplier should see the items that are ordered such that the correct quantity of items are delivered and this cannot have any mismatch in the invoice. The back ordering or receiving of the surplus goods makes the ordering of items lengthier and delays the payment processing. This also increases the dissatisfaction level of the consumers and impacts the business growth. An order tracking system is needed to be implemented such that it can track the orders that the purchase office makes. Here in the current system the Purchase office is solely responsible for the management of the order and if he makes any mistake all the supply chain process gets impacted and thus an alternative flow is needed to be introduced for automating the order processing and eliminate the errors in the current business process.

The system should also be able to manage the payment such that payment can be updated directly against that customer. Also the middleman supplier can start another type of payment system which is the online payment system. Thorough the online payment system the supplier can easily collect the payments from the customers and in this process no manual effort is required for the determining which customer has paid the loan. All the information will be stored automatically against the ID of the customer in the database including the paid amount of money and total outstanding loan.

Advantages and disadvantages of using Petri net diagram

Currently there are various types of modelling techniques that are available for the business process modelling. In the aspects the two most used modelling techniques are the business process modelling notation and another one is the UML diagrams.

In this aspect the main strength of the BPMN is that it provides an easy way for the non-expert users so that they can easily understand the process diagrams. Also, this BPMN represents sematic of complex processes in an intangible form easily (Agostinelli et al., 2019). It also reduces the noise communication between design of process and implementation. The main weakness of the BPMN is that for BPMN several iterations are required for the diagram implementation. Also, it is not straight forward in representation of the roles.

In the case of UML it is highly recognised platform for the business process modelling. Also, the UML is highly flexible in the modelling process (Geiger et al., 2018). In the case of UML formal notation is not necessary and this is one of the biggest weakness of UML. The UML also becomes more complex with its increased usage.

References

Agostinelli, S., Maggi, F. M., Marrella, A., & Sapio, F. (2019, June). Achieving GDPR compliance of BPMN process models. In International Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering (pp. 10-22). Springer, Cham.

Geiger, M., Harrer, S., Lenhard, J., & Wirtz, G. (2018). BPMN 2.0: The state of support and implementation. Future Generation Computer Systems, 80, 250-262.

Hu, L., Liu, Z., Hu, W., Wang, Y., Tan, J., & Wu, F. (2020). Petri-net-based dynamic scheduling of flexible manufacturing system via deep reinforcement learning with graph convolutional network. Journal of Manufacturing Systems, 55, 1-14.

Kim, R., Gangolly, J., & Elsas, P. (2017). A framework for analytics and simulation of accounting information systems: A Petri net modeling primer. International Journal of Accounting Information Systems, 27, 30-54.

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