Overcoming business process reengineering obstacles using ontology-based knowledge map methodology

Business process reengineering (BPR) is identified as one of the most important solutions for organizational improvements in all performance measures of business processes. However, high failure rates 70% is reported about using it the most important reason that caused the failure is the focus on the process itself; regardless of the surrounding environment, and the knowledge of the organization. The other reasons are due to the lack of tools to determine the causes of the inconsistencies and inefficiencies.

This paper proposes Process Reengineering Ontology-based knowledge Map Methodology (PROM) to reduce the failure ratio, solve BPR problems, and overcome their difficulties. Using an organizational ontology to show the structure and environment surrounding to organization's processes, using knowledge maps as an inference that succeeds to identify and find out the causes that lead to contradictions and inefficiencies, and using Analytical hierarchy processing to identify and prioritize processes of the business to be re-designed. Through the proposed methodology, all organizational processes are completely analyzed. Moreover, Analytical Hierarchy Processing technique is used to show the most important processes with high priority to be reengineered first then it is easy to discover any errors occurred during reengineering process through knowledge map so BPR is done successfully. Finally, Apply the proposed methodology to inventory management shows how processes reengineering are done successfully and helping the organization to achieve its objectives.