Thesis subject

Implementing standardized business processes using ARIS

The production and marketing of high-quality animal feed requires more than production facilities. Modern agri-food companies, such as De Heus, are not mere local feed producers but international companies with several local and international subsidiaries.

Such growth is usually achieved not only through endogenous growth but mostly through acquisitions. Each of the acquired companies come with their own IT tools and business processes. Aligning the diverse IT and business processes adopted by the various facilities is a major practical challenge; it is also a major scientific research area that is usually labelled at business process alignment and business-IT alignment.

In this assignment, you will investigate, analyse and implement different methods for the analysis of the various processes that are directly and indirectly related to the production and delivery of feed. The tool selected by the company for achieving this goal is ARIS, a modelling tool for business process analysis and management. With ARIS, the company aims to standardize end-to-end business processes, enabling operational excellence.

Background

De Heus is an international company with a core activity of production and marketing of high-quality animal feed. Since its establishment in 1911, the enterprise has grown from a small regional company to one of the major feed producers in the Netherlands with several international subsidiaries. The expansion of De Heus has been achieved through endogenous growth as well as acquisitions. Thanks to the rapid growth, particularly outside of the Netherlands, De Heus is currently one of the top 15 feed suppliers in the world.


    Objectives

    As part of a larger project team, you will address the following major sets of research questions and thereby provide also practically useful products:

    • RQ1: What are the viewpoints (stakeholders) involved in such business process alignment and how should the modelling tool adopted (in this case ARIS) should be configured? What modelling notation are needed and how should they be used in order to support the daily work of the case study company (De Heus)?
    • RQ2: What are the requirements for IT in order to achieve the business-IT alignment across the case study company? What should a good reporting and analysis of the processes should look like? What should business dashboards to communicate and visualize important KPIs look like? What governance model should be adopted for the tool?
    • RQ3: What templates (patterns) of business processes can be adopted? How should those templates be used? For example, you will define the basic processes defined in the project “The Heus Way of Working”. You will work on the publication of the information of the processes to other shareholders. Create a Global Glossary.

      Literature


      Requirements

        Theme(s): Implementing standardized business processes, Management Information System, Supply Chain, Business-IT Alignment

        Contact person(s)