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Business process management (PhD Level)

Course

URL study guide

https://tue.osiris-student.nl/onderwijscatalogus/extern/cursus?cursuscode=1BM08&collegejaar=2025&taal=en

Description

Business Process Management (BPM) is a radical shift from traditional management thinking. Instead of taking an organization's functional decomposition as a starting point to manage the efficiency and effectiveness of operations, BPM focuses on the business processes that cut right through different departments (or even organizations). A business process can be seen as a structured set of activities designed to produce a specified output for a particular customer. As such, an effective and efficient business process is a particularly valuable asset for companies to attract and please its customers. Nowadays, Information Technology must be considered as the key enabler of high-performing business processes.
Managing business processes is an inherently cyclic endeavor, which passes through different phases. The course on Business Process Management considers each of the following phases:

Identification : the problem to distinguish which processes in organizations require priority to be managed.
Discovery: the elicitation and specification of the way that operational processes are carried out.
Diagnosis: the understanding of a process structural ability to fulfill the requirements it must meet
Design: the planned action to increase the performance and/or conformance of business processes by changing its elements
Execution: the execution of business processes using advanced IT, such as workflow management systems
Control: the day-to-day monitoring of a business process to detect operational problems and violations of regulations

​The focus of this course is on advanced aspects of integrated management of business processes, including the various phases of the process life-cycle (i.e. discovery, diagnosis, design, execution, control). No basic theory on BPM will be taught for the PhD level course; if students lack this basic knowledge, they will have to take the 1BM05 course too. Students taking the course will be involved in an assignment where they will have to: study advanced literature on a topic related to one or more phases of the process life-cycle, agreed with the teacher; apply what they have read to a real-world case study, using data that is provided to them or that they collect themselves; and, finally, report on the results.

Additional test information:
Individual assignment: The student is expected to develop artifacts (software, models, etc) within a real-world use case discussed with the teacher and write a report describing the results, the implications and the limitations of the study.

Objectives

After taking this course, the student will be able to:
  • Know advanced theory, tools, techniques on one or more phases of the process management life-cycle;
  • Be able to apply the concepts they learned from the literature study to a real-world case study;
  • Be able to report on the results obtained by the study, elaborating upon implications and limitations.

Method of Assessment

Assignment
Course period1/09/2231/08/26
Course formatCourse