"GRAPH THEORY" AND "MATRIX METHOD" BASED APPROACH FOR BUSINESS PROCESS MODELING/SIMULATION SOFTWARE SELECTION

It is possible to provide practical solutions to many complex problems by making use of process modeling. For example; it is possible to predict whether an investment will be beneficial or production speed will improve or unit prices will decrease in case of adding a new machine to a process. Similarly; it is possible to investigate whether a new work practice will improve productivity and analyze its benefit level, bottlenecks in the system, cost increasing and/or non-value adding activities. Moreover, it is possible to provide effective solutions by generating alternative process chains by modeling processes. Several software developed to enable effective process modeling. In order to realize the mentioned benefits it is critical to select a suitable modeling software. In the present study a multiple criteria decision making model is proposed for selecting such software. Graph theory and matrix method is utilized for model development. This method is not well known in the literature. However it has some desirable properties like ability to model criteria interactions, hierarchy and evaluate fuzzy judgments. The current paper presents the first multiple criteria model for evaluating and selecting process modeling software. It also presents the first application of graph theory-matrix method to this problem.