Topic: Synthesis and Decomposition of Processes in Organizations



Abstract

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 

sub-processes and (2) decomposing aggregate processes into distinct sub-processes

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.