How product representation influences the understanding of supply chain process models

ABSTRACT

Process models are increasingly being used to analyse business processes within supply chains. Although products are an essential part of supply chain semantics, product representation in supply chain process models is insufficient. This research proposes a novel product representation, namely, ‘labelled flows,’ which directly assigns product names to flows instead of implicitly representing products through other visual constructs. Using a laboratory experiment, we find that labelled flows improve domain understanding with respect to product comprehension and product modelling performance. Our contribution to modelling research is a novel product representation within supply chain process models, which enhances domain understanding.

KEYWORDS:

• Process model
• modelling grammar
• supply chain
• supply chain management
• laboratory experiment

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The work by Joerg Leukel has been supported by the Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung [16KIS0083]. The work by Vijayan Sugumaran has been supported by the 2018 School of Business Administration Spring/Summer Research Fellowship from Oakland University, Rochester, MI, United States.