Building ontology based knowledge maps to assist business process re-engineering

Business Process Re-engineering (BPR) is being used to improve the efficiency of the organizational processes, however, a number of obstacles have prevented its full potential from being realised. One of these obstacles is caused by an emphasis on the business process itself at the exclusion of considering other important knowledge of the organization. Another is due to the lack of tools for identifying the cause of the inefficiencies and inconsistencies in BPR. In this paper we propose a methodology for BPR that overcomes these two obstacles through the use of a formal organizational ontology and knowledge structure and source maps. These knowledge maps are represented formally to facilitate an inferencing mechanism which helps to automatically identify the causes of the inefficiencies and inconsistencies. We demonstrate the applicability of this methodology through the use of a case study of a university domain. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.