Using component technology to develop a simulation library for business process modelling

Though much of the hype about business process change and re-engineering has, thankfully, died away it remains true that many organizations wish to improve their business processes. To meet this need, Business Process Simulation has been promoted, often by consultants and software companies, the latter with their proprietary software. Most of the software tools are very easy-to-use, but lack flexibility beyond pre-defined constructs. BPSim++ is a re-usable library of modelling components for simulating business processes, implemented in C++ using the Visual Component Library of Borland C++ Builder. It combines the ease-of-use of a graphical user interface with the flexibility of a component framework. To illustrate and assess the library, a case study of a call handling process is described and the strengths and limitations of the approach are discussed. The paper concludes that component technology as used in BPSim++ can be profitably employed to address both ease-of-use and flexibility.