ABSTRACT
Booming competition in an increasingly global marketplace leaves no room for successful companies to harbor internal inefficiencies. Even more importantly, customers are becoming more demanding; if one product or service does not live up to their expectations, there are many more from which to choose. The stakes are high, and so is the penalty for not satisfying the right customers with the right products and services. The quest for internal efficiency and external effectiveness means that organizations must align their internal activities and resources with the external requirements, or to put it differently, business processes must be designed appropriately. To that end, the main objective of this book is to provide the reader with a comprehensive understanding of the wide range of analytical tools that can be used for modeling, analyzing, and ultimately designing business processes. Particular emphasis is placed on discrete event simulation, as it represents one of the most flexible and powerful tools available for these purposes. Still, an important message is to choose tools that are appropriate for the situation at hand, and simulation is not always the best choice.
