Business process redesign towards IoT-enabled context-awareness: the case of a Chinese bulk port
Business Process Management Journal
ISSN: 1463-7154
Article publication date: 30 March 2022
Issue publication date: 20 May 2022
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the extant literature about the co-evolvement of Business Process Management (BPM) and the Internet of Things (IoT) by proposing the IoT-enabled Context-aware BPM (IoT-CaBPM) framework to bridge from the IoT infrastructure to context-aware business processes.
Design/methodology/approach
Motivated by the “Three Waves” of BPM research, IoT-enabled context-awareness is, therefore, expected to be achieved for enhancing the business process design, which pilots a new wave of BPR (Business Process Redesign/Reengineering) to enable the business process coevolve with IoT and analytics. This paper reports an illustrative case study of BPR in a Chinese bulk port, one of the hub seaports that widely adopted IoT technologies over the last few years.
Findings
The IoT implementation and data analytics has increased the efficiency and improve the monitoring effectively. The proposed IoT-CaBPM framework availably helps to identify and match nodes of IoT devices, business decisions and analytic models in order to redesign a business process towards context-aware variability. As IoT is rapidly becoming the new dominant IT paradigm is moving towards mature implementation in various industries, the corresponding BPR must be planned and executed strategically for achieving better benefits.
Originality/value
Despite some research extend BPM standard by integrating IoT devices as a sort of resources or report generically that the ports operations are affected by IoT, there is still a lack of layers from the IoT infrastructure to context-aware business processes. An industrial BPR case with business models in detail is also a lack for presenting the specific implications and effectiveness of the adoption of such technologies. This paper fills in this gap.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
Conflicts of interest: The authors declare no conflict of interest.
Funding: This study was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (52172311).
Citation
Song, R., Cui, W., Vanthienen, J., Huang, L. and Wang, Y. (2022), "Business process redesign towards IoT-enabled context-awareness: the case of a Chinese bulk port", Business Process Management Journal, Vol. 28 No. 3, pp. 656-683. https://doi.org/10.1108/BPMJ-09-2021-0569
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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