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Synthesis and Decomposition of Processes in Organizations

Edwin L. Cox School of Business, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas 75275-0333
Owen Graduate School of Management, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee 37203
abasu{at}mail.cox.smu.edu
bob.blanning{at}owen.vanderbilt.edu

Organizations today face increasing pressures to integrate their processes across disparate divisions and functional units, in order to remove inefficiencies as well as to enhance manageability. Process integration involves two major types of changes to process structure: (1) synthesizing processes from separate but interdependent subprocesses, and (2) decomposing aggregate processes into distinct subprocesses that are more manageable. We present an approach to facilitate this type of synthesis and decomposition through formal analysis of process structure using a mathematical structure called a metagraph.

Key Words: Process Integration; Distributed Processes; Metagraphs; Graph Theory; Synthesis and Decomposition
History: This paper was received on May 29, 2000.